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SURFACE JAPAN 

SHORT NOTES OF A SWIFT SURVEY 



BY 

DON C. SEITZ 

AUTHOR OF 

'WRITINGS BY AND ABOUT JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER" 

" DISCOVERIES IN EVERY-DAV EUROPE " 

"ELBA AND ELSEWHERE" 



ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY PHOTOGRAVURE 
AND MARGINAL SKETCHES AFTER HOKUSAI 




HARPER bf BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
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COPYRIGHT, 1911. BY HARPER & BROTHERS 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER. 1911 



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TO 

M. E. S. 

GOOD COMRADE 



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'T^HE approach to the island empire of Nip- 
■*^ pon comes as a soft surprise. For days the 
yacht-hke steamer has been plowing the North 
Pacific in fog and sprinkle, with now and then a 
bit of sea brisk enough to moisten the decks. 
There is little distraction and small desire for it. 
As the steamer turns more and more toward the 
polar star the traveler learns that a straight line is 
not the shortest between two points when cross- 
ing the Western sea, but can be comforted by 
the thought that no one else knew it until about 
forty years ago, when an unscientific navigator 
figured out that a ship logged less by going up 
and then down. 

So, seeming to seek the pole, the ship skirts the 
Aleuts, giving, when the day is fair, a glimpse of 




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Mount Cleveland, shining in silver-white above 
the sea. Land is in frequent sight and all of it 
is American. Whales frolic about in families, 
and specimens of Nereocistis, the gigantic arctic 
seaweed, buoyed like a fisher's net, with fronds 
sometimes hundreds of feet in length, sprawl 
across the sea. The days are misty and the 
nights are dark. 

But on the thirteenth day the sea settles into 
an azure calm, with twinkling ripples topped by 
silver tips. The gray sky of the north has 
ceased to leaden its mirror — the sea. Feathery 
beds of seaweed blossom on the surface in tints of 
gold and green. Flying-fish scurry to get out of 
the vessel's way. Buccaneering sharks circle 
evilly about with blue dorsal fins sharply cutting 
the smooth surface. Schools of big fish hunting 
little ones splash and leap in pursuit of prey, 
while scolding sea-birds flutter over their course, 
grateful for any morsels that may escape. 

Then out of nowhere a single sampan shows 
as if set purposely into the foreground to deck 
what is to come. The ribbed sails lift duskily 
and the outlines of the boat are dim. Next the 
headland point of Chosi shows itself, a low 

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single rock. Later it elongates, and a line of 
coast appears, marked with the slender column 
of a light. Like all things Japanese, it intrudes 
shyly into the scene. But above, behind, and 
all about is a strange meeting of sky and sea, 
gray upon gray, silver upon silver, as Whistler 
loved to paint. There are no harsh lines, no 
loud colors. Even the Orient sun goes modestly 
down to light the Western world, leaving only 
the pinkness of the apple-blossom about his trail. 
Then all is gray, not of ashes, but of pearl. 
More fisher-boats flit into the view without sign 
of coming. They just appear. The picture is 
complete! Japan is here! 

By this time it is evening and the harbor is 
eighty miles away, so the ship loafs through the 
night to make port at Yokohama in the early 
dawn. Here all is new, vivid, and strange, 
this first-opened door to the distant, different 
East. 

Sampans drift about manned by crews, half 
clad to the Western eye, but compact in physique 
and skilled in water ways. 

The sampan, which is everybody's boat in 
Japan, is shaped like a toothpick shoe, drawn 

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to a shallow point at the toe and widening 
flatly at the heel. It is propelled by square 
sails, set well aft and stayed with bamboo ribs, 
which take the place of reef-points. Sometimes 
the sails are hung in sections from the yard, with 
an inch or two between the strips through which 
the air can blow. This type has no stays for 
reefing. When the wind cannot be used, the 
sculling oar takes its place, operating directly 
over the stern and from the side. This oar is of 
two pieces, handle and blade, joined at an 
obtuse angle, and swung on a ball-bearing, so 
that the sculling operation is a continuous and 
easy sway of the oar. Sometimes half a dozen 
scullers drive a boat and get up as much speed 
as a gasoline motor might. The fishing-boats 
are taking slowly to "kickers," so some day, 
perhaps, the crooked oar will go and the com- 
bustion engine move the sampan across the 
bays, replacing the picturesque with the prac- 
tical and skill with smell. 



The Japanese efforts to create a good im- 
pression upon foreigners begin at the custom- 
house. Here the celebrated smile makes itself 




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officially visible. The Welcome Society's pam- 
phlet observes that visitors will be treated with 
all possible consideration consistent with the 
observance of the law. This is true. Tobacco 
is barred by high duties, something like three 
hundred per cent., to protect the government 
monopoly. But within the limit the declared 
amount is carefully stamped and canceled, so 
that no one may think the stray box of ciga- 
rettes has been smuggled and thereby cause 
annoyance. 

The same idea prevails on the travel routes. 
In September, 1910, as the result of an unseemly 
row raised by a European who was excluded 
from the porter's closet, with the single idea on 
the part of the train guard of preserving the 
traveler's dignity, which was painfully misunder- 
stood, Baron Goto, Minister of Communica- 
tions, circulated a most polite caution to railway 
authorities and employees to the effect that in 
performing their duties strict care should be 
taken in their method of treating foreign tourists. 
"Although," he observed, "there is no necessity 
of discriminating between Japanese and foreign- 
ers or to give the latter special treatment, it 



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should be remembered that they have to undergo 
various inconveniences, resulting from the differ- 
ence of habits, customs, language, etc., and rail- 
way employees should endeavor to treat for- 
eigners cordially and sympathetically in so far as 
it does not interfere with the comfort of other 
passengers. Some foreign passengers may vio- 
late railway rules, owing to ignorance, and rail- 
way employees should check their conduct by 
courteously explaining the regulations. If tour- 
ists will not listen to explanations and continue 
to violate the regulations intentionally, proper 
steps should be taken to restrain them, or they 
may be compelled to leave the train, so as to 
extend equal comfort and convenience to other 
passengers." 

Tokyo, the capital and first city of Japan, 
covers one hundred square miles and houses 
two million souls. Because Yokohama is its 
port the impression prevails that it lies inland. 
This is not so. Tokyo is on the sea, eighteen 
miles north of Yokohama, at the head of the 
Bay of Yedo, that formerly gave the city its 
name. So shallow, however, are the waters 
and so great is the tidal recession that only 




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vessels of the lightest draught can make harbor. 
It is one of the dreams that some time when 
Japan is rich the reaches will be dredged and 
Yedo made a second London and the greatest 
seaport of the Eastern world. But public in- 
come is small, and the railroad leads in all 
directions from Yokohama, where the harbor is 
reinforced with a stout breakwater and equipped 
with splendid docks. Meanwhile, Tokyo does 
the best it can to improve itself internally. The 
railroads leading to the north, south, and inland 
do not start from a common center, but from 
widely separated terminals. To remedy this an 
ambitious scheme of an all-embracing viaduct 
has been planned and much of it built, but lack 
of funds has held up the completion. The 
scheme includes also a great central station, and 
that, too, will come some day when the govern- 
ment shakes off its load of war. Recently the 
viaduct has been put to some use as an elevated 
trolley line. Advantage has been taken of the 
frequent fires to widen streets, and there are now 
some splendid thoroughfares, though as yet the 
city lacks a center, abounding in numerous in- 
teresting districts, linked together with the 

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narrow streets and close-built houses charac- 
teristic of Japanese towns. 



The climate of Tokyo is much like that of 
New York. It has the same lovely spring, the 
temperate, enjoyable fall, a much more reason- 
able winter, and the same kind of sticky, hot dog- 
days. These come suddenly on or about the 
20th of July and form the season called "doyo." 

Good beer is brewed in Tokyo. It is some- 
thing like a light Pilsener. Much is consumed, 
and brewery stock is at a premium. Liquors 
are sold in shops, but not to be absorbed on the 
premises. Bottled stuff is taken home or drunk 
at the tea-houses. There are no saloons. 

Tokyo has a stock exchange, whereon some 
forty securities are listed, the quotations of which 
flit up and down in the familiar New York 
fashion. Brokers' shops are scattered about 
the city, each with its outdoor bulletin covered 
with chalked ideographs expressing the varying 
shades of elevation and depression and suggest- 
ing the celebrated blackboard maintained by 
Mr. Henry Clews in the basement of the Mills 
Building in New York. With cheerful opti- 

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mism occasional Japanese industrial corpora- 
tions fix their dividends on organization without 
waiting to see what the year will bring forth, 
and luckless stock-buyers end their own broken 
lives, a la Wall Street, when the gambles fail. 

Just as Paris is not France, so Tokyo is not 
Japan, though less affected by the foreign ele- 
ment than the ports of Yokohama and Kobe. 
Greatest of Japanese cities as it is in area and 
numbers, it is scant in industries and overloaded 
with politics. While parties do not rear their 
heads very high or obtrude much in public 
matters in Japan, policies do, and government 
policies, entering as they so largely must into 
every-day affairs, through its wide operations on 
business lines, are the constant theme of dis- 
cussion in the numerous newspapers and, inci- 
dentally, among men. Foreign relations occupy 
a very large place in the clatter. 

Tokyo has a pretty comprehensive trolley 
system and the lowest fares in the world. For 
seven sen, equivalent to three and one-half cents 
American, one can ride to almost any part of the 
one hundred square miles of the city and return. 
The return fare must always be paid on boarding 

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a car. The management assumes that what 
goes up must come down. The cars are good, 
speedy, and crowded. Occasionally some one is 
killed, and to read the newspaper "kicks" it is 
easy to imagine that Tokyo is Brooklyn and that 
the good old Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company 
is getting its dues. It is astonishing that the 
slaughter is not large, as many of the populace 
adhere to their ancient habit of walking in the 
middle of the road, though there are sidewalks 
on the trolley streets. The conductors and 
motormen wear the conventional uniform, but 
do not say "step lively" or "move up front." 
Neither do they insist that there is plenty of 
room in the middle. They just run the car and 
collect, leaving the traveler to himself. Seldom 
does any one get up to give a woman a seat. 
There is an overhead rack for bundles. The 
Tokyo youths jump on and off the moving cars 
wearing their clogs, an amazing accomplish- 
ment. The straps are a foot longer than in 
America, to accommodate the shortened reach 
of the little women. The passengers ride mostly 
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oddly enough, clustered about great temples 
are the amusement places of the common folk 
of the town. At the portal of the first temple 
encountered the Gods of Thunder and Wind, 
each with a red face and a singular dental resem- 
blance to Theodore Roosevelt, stand guard, the 
occasion for a curious custom. Whoever has a 
wish chews a spit-ball and hurls it at the huge 
face of the idol. If it sticks the wish is sure to 
be granted ; if it falls, it goes the way of all wish- 
ing. The prudent temple authorities cover the 
shrine with a wire net of one-inch mesh, which 
interferes considerably with the ability to land a 
sticker. Whether this is to keep down the 
supply of successful wishes or to preserve the 
figure from being unduly beslobbered has not 
been revealed. It is done at such shrines 
throughout the country. 

Once past the idols, the streets run wild with 
colors and blazing lights. Everything that can 
amuse is for sale. There are streets full of 
theaters, from the old-fashioned Japanese kind, 
where a curtain over the front is lifted to give the 
street a taste of the show in invitation to pay up 
and come in, to the more modern "ten, twenty, 

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thirty" sort — except that the highest-priced 
seat is ten cents and the lowest three cents — 
where Japanese versions of East Lynne and 
similar agonies are portrayed. 

Tokyo is a city of shops. There is scarce a 
single block of residences pure and simple in the 
city proper. The artisan, the merchant, and the 
grocer dwell in their stores, except among the 
modernized ones of the Ginza, the Broadway of 
Tokyo. The stock of wares is small, and the 
storekeeper with goods worth two hundred yen 
is doing a big business. Some one estimates the 
value of the average shop stock in Japan at IS25. 

Over the gateway of the Yoshiwara, the City 
of the Sinful Night, in Tokyo, there shines 
a cross of fire: not a sign of hope and warning, 
but the product of the blaze of an electric light 
against the cross-trees of a telephone pole, an 
accident, but none the less striking, as it stands 
out amid its black surroundings and in such 
singular proximity! Within are to be found the 
best buildings in the city, if not in Japan, outside 
of those of European pattern. All are three or 
four stories high, roofed, galleried, and parti- 
tioned Japanese fashion, but on a far grander 

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scale than elsewhere. The ground-floors are 
open to the street, except for wide lattice barriers 
behind which the women sit in rows, richly 
dressed, elaborately coifFured, and painted from 
chin to brow, bearing every affectation of ele- 
gance, and usually conducting themselves with 
decorum. Now and then a wonton will utter 
a thin, squealing cry like the note of a peacock, 
but for the most part they are still and com- 
posedly await a bidder. Entrance to each house 
is at a low gate, where a man sells admission 
tickets — something like the brass-check system 
in New York's former red-light district. Trav- 
elers' stories often intimate that respectability 
does not suffer by a residence in the Yoshiwara, 
and many popular Japanese tales concern 
devoted daughters who sell themselves to save 
parents from distress. Some do marry out of 
the place. But, rude romance aside, Tokyo 
is not proud of the Yoshiwara and would be 
very glad to get rid of the section if it could 
do so without spreading demoralization. The 
name has become the accepted designation 
for similar resorts all over Japan, though liter- 
ally without significance, meaning merely a 

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place where the reeds grow, an undesirable bit of 
real estate being selected for the proscribed when 
the system was established three centuries ago. 
The women number but a tenth of the hundred 
thousand who dwell here, though they alone 
are forbidden liberty to go where they please. 
The streets surge with peddlers, food-sellers, and 
their wives and families who elect to live on the 
crumbs that fall from the hands of the scarlet 
women who have no "A" embroidered on their 
garments, but who wear the bow of the obi 
turned in front instead of back, in mute ad- 
vertisement of their calling! The obi takes the 
place of the corset in Japan and wraps its nine- 
foot folds of fabric closely about the feminine 
waist. It is hot and heavy and a very expensive 
article of dress, often costing a thousand yen if 
embroidered with threads of gold. 



Once away from the confusion of the capital, 
Japan becomes itself in the every-day affairs of 
life and industry. Old Japan is gone, say the 
observers. This may be so in the vanishing of 
the military class called Samurai and the coming 
of the trolley car, but foreign intrusion does not 

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seem deep to the visitor from afar. Aside from 
the Standard Oil Company's cases of lamp petrol 
and the Singer Sewing Machine concern's ener- 
getic invasion, the mark of the foreigner lies 
lightly the instant one steps away from the Bund 
in Yokohama or the European quarter in Kobe. 
True, there are stores selling American clocks, 
watches, hats, and leather shoes, but these are 
rare. The multitude clings to its kimonos and 
its clogs, sleeps upon mats with a wooden saw- 
buck for a pillow and remains true to its customs 
and simplicities. 

The house of Count Okuma sits on the crest 
of the cliff at Kodzu facing the smiling sea. 
Far away in the foreground rises a mountain 
huge in outline but so dimly distant as not 
to affront the view. Instead it flits like a blue 
shadow into the scene, high and long, complete 
in detail and yet not distracting. It satisfies the 
eye. Below, across the gabled roofs of the 
village, that are just visible between the palms 
and dark trees of the Japanese orange, the bay 
wrinkles and twinkles in the breeze. Far away 
on either hand, beyond the mountain on the 
south and to the northward, the headlands show, 
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extending their wide arms into the waves and 
vanishing in a horizon of silver and blue. Noth- 
ing comes suddenly into Japanese scenery. It 
reveals itself shyly, half timidly, like a slowly dis- 
solving view, one picture fading before another 
comes. 

When one visits Count Okuma at his country 
home he goes by train winding over the meadow 
between the hills and the sea, an hour or so from 
Yokohama. Two rickshaw men tug and push 
the guest up the steep hillside through a narrow 
lane. The house is new, but Japanese to the last 
detail. There is not a scar on the woodwork at 
the portal, where brutal leather shoes with their 
dust and nails are removed. The stockinged 
feet step with relief on cool, soft matting. A 
little room to the left holds a commode on which 
rest two braziers full of cool water, and beside 
each is a covered bowl of hot. Brushes and 
toilet articles are there. When refreshed, the 
house is before. It may be all one room or many 
rooms, as convenience or the occasion requires. 
The paper panels in pine-wood frames shift the 
interior into many forms, gliding noiselessly in 
their grooves. Golden sprays of rice in head 

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and straw delicately decorate the panels. The 
paper is white, the frames are natural wood, and 
there is a lacquered finger-hold for ease in shift- 
ing. It moved an American housewife to note, 
that although constantly handled, not a finger- 
mark showed anywhere, in shining contrast to 
the doors at home! 

Here the democratic sage of Japan loves to 
linger during the heated term and welcome 
visitors, to profit by their talk and to endow in 
turn from his great store of wit and wisdom. 
When luncheon-hour arrives the panels slip aside 
and the front of the house opens to the sea, 
whence the breeze comes coolingly and fans the 
guests at the feast. Grave servitors bring the 
dishes, which to-day are American, plus better 
cooking than can ordinarily be found in house- 
holds. They bow to the floor with each course 
in the refinement of courtesy that dwelt in Old 
Japan. Out of the world in life and deeply in it 
in intellect is this day on the cliff at Kodzu! 

Some fifteen years ago a Japanese citizen dis- 
approving of Count Okuma's advanced ideas 
started out to " remove " him with a bomb. The 
effort only removed one of the Count's legs. The 

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conservative gentleman committed hari-kari on 
the spot, and so concluded the affair neatly. On 
the anniversary of the double event the relatives 
and friends of the deceased assemble at his tomb 
to do honor to his memory. Count Okuma 
always sends a representative to attend the 
ceremony. Whether he does this as a delicate 
reminder that the laugh is on the other fellow or 
merely to be polite is a profound puzzle. But 
Count Okuma is a true philosopher and bears no 
ill-will. Also the annual event calls public 
attention to the leg in a dignified and respectable 
way. Readers of Mexican history will recall the 
funeral Santa Anna gave his leg, lost at Vera 
Cruz, taking it to the tomb in a hearse drawn by 
twenty white horses, escorted by the remaining 
three-quarters of its former possessor in an open 
barouche, a brass band, a division of soldiers, and 
the entire populace! 

Another explanation is that high Japanese 
politeness is responsible for such a course. 
Arguing that friends and relatives suffer keenly 
enough from the disaster brought about by the 
desperate acts involved, it is considered only 
right to show that no hard feelings exist and by 




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the attentions noted to indicate a delicate sym- 
pathy for those who in a way are loaded with 
misfortune. 

In i860 the Regent li Kamon-no-Kami, who 
took the full personal responsibility for making 
the treaties that opened Japan to the world, was 
assassinated by a band of Ronin, or unattached 
Samurai, dreading the passing of the old order, 
who fell upon him on a wintry day when he was 
cramped up in his sedan chair and had no 
chance to defend himself. His guard rallied and 
assailed the reactionaries, who were slain on the 
spot or rounded up in due time and rendered up 
to justice, which was unsparingly meted out. 
Yet every year on the anniversary of the affray a 
memorial service is held in honor of the assassins, 
which is numerously attended, and the Imperial 
Household always sends a member. There is 
much ceremony of mourning and respect. No 
one seems to shed any tears or incense over the 
tomb of li Kamon-no-Kami. 

All this seems strange and inexplicable to the 
Westerner; but possibly it is only regarded as 
paying just tribute to men who gave up their lives 
for an idea, while as for li Kamon-no-Kami he is 

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secure in his fame. Besides, is not the headless 
body of Charles Stuart revered in its royal tomb 
at Windsor, while Oliver Cromwell, whose dust 
was scattered to feed a King's revenge, stands in 
bronze at Westminster, and still rules England! 




When the Yokohama Chamber of Commerce 
holds an election it does not trouble to call a 
meeting. The sealed ballot-box is sent around 
to members by an attendant, and the votes are 
thus collected, to be counted by the tellers 
at their leisure. It gets a full vote by this 
process. 

"Our soldiers are not demigods, nor are 
they beasts," said a Japanese merchant. "They 
are just men of sense and reason." He says it 
pretty correctly, for, be it understood, there is 
neither desperation nor fatalism in a Japanese 
regiment. It is very human and very exacting 
toward its commanders. It must be wisely led 
and well cared for or there is trouble. The men 
must know not only what is wanted of them, 
but why it is wanted. If the reason does not 
appear good there is no blind obedience; the 
matter must be made clear and reasonable. 

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Otherwise the command will do nothing. A 
Japanese regiment obeys and disobeys the same 
way. The officers have to be men of tact and 
civility to succeed in leadership. They are there 
to help the men and to expand their understand- 
ing of what is required. They are not to leave 
them to the mercies and management of the non- 
commissioned staff, which is the tendency every- 
where in armies, except, perhaps, in France. 
The American officer of a transport during the 
war liked to relate how at the embarking from 
Ujina a lieutenant stood at the foot of the gang- 
way and took the gun from each private as he 
stepped from the rocking boat and held it un- 
til the soldier was firmly on the stage, while the 
majors guided the men on deck to their num- 
bered berths amidships, where the captains saw 
that each man lay down and so kept out of the 
way of others until anchor was weighed and the 
ship in motion : Result, eighteen hundred men 
and four hundred horses put aboard between 
eight and eleven, to be neatly landed in Korea 
twenty-four hours later! 

On the top of Misenzan (or Tortoise) Moun- 
tain, on the Island of Itsukushima, is a sort 

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of soldiers' Valhalla. Here three hundred 
years ago the Shogun Hideyosi celebrated his 
triumph in Korea by building of unhewn logs a 
great pavilion called the "Room of the Thou- 
sand Mats" — though it measures less than 
half that number. It was a temple of the 
Buddhists, until they were expelled from the 
sacred island, but it still contains a shrine to 
Hideyosi, and here many soldiers were quar- 
tered en route to fight Russia. Following cus- 
tom, each wrote his name for memory's sake 
upon a rice paddle and nailed it to a post or 
beam. So the supports of the temple are 
covered with these mute memorials of the 
Japanese lads who went to lay their bodies in 
the Manchurian trenches. Any visitor can sign 
a paddle and have it nailed up for ten sen, or a 
big one for twenty sen. It was with a thrill 
that the eye rested upon the name of that gallant 
gentleman and brave soldier Col. A. A. Augur, 
U. S. A., dated but a little while before his un- 
timely death. 

Dogs are not plentiful in Japan, though in 
evidence. The delicate lap-dog which much 
resembles the King Charles spaniel is the choic- 

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est variety, but there is another breed quite unlike 
any Western pup that is cultivated by dog lovers. 
This is a heavy animal, large as a collie, but 
thicker set and shorter in body, with heavy 
shoulders, sharply pointed muzzle, and wolfish 
ears, light brown or yellowish white in color, 
with fur that sticks out like that of the Eskimo 
canine. Little terriers suggesting the fox strain 
are rather common. No barks were heard from 
any sort of a cur. 

Mental arithmetic does not exist in Japan, nor, 
for that matter, neither does mathematics in the 
forms familiar in the West. All computing is 
done with the Chinese counting frame called the 
abacus, holding a series of buttons strung on 
bamboo rods, the sliding of which from one side 
to the other makes the count. The machine pro- 
vides no way for checking results, and the count- 
ing often has to be done over and over again until 
the counter thinks the result is correct. In buy- 
ing a number of articles the bill has to be totaled 
up in this cumbersome way. The American eas- 
ily bewilders the shopkeeper by a swift mental 
computation completed before the first string of 
buttons has been shifted. 

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The theory that Chinese bookkeepers are 
employed in banks and business offices because 
they are superior in honesty to other Eastern 
races is only partly true. It is mainly because 
they have mathematical powers denied the 
others. While it is complicated, the Chinese 
still have an arithmetical sense and can keep 
books so they are intelligible, while the Japanese 
as a rule cannot. 

Japanese travelers tote air-cushions for pillows 
and snooze in their clothes undisturbed by noise 
or inconvenience. The absence of neurotic 
troubles is a national blessing. They will sleep 
amid any surroundings, and, while not a noisy 
people, put up with squeaks and petty sounds 
that would madden the American. Yet the 
cities are singularly silent; the dirt or light mac- 
adam streets carry little traffic other than rick- 
shaws or the two-wheeled porter carts. Where 
bulls or horses are employed they usually wear 
grass pads on their hoofs. The people are low- 
voiced and tranquil, but the noises that do assert 
themselves are thin and nasal and have a wire 
edge to them. One sound that annoys the 
American ear is the patter-patter of the flip- 

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flapping slippers as the maid-servants run about 
the house. 



Kyoto was free from flies in August and the 
insects are generally scarce in Japan. Madame 
Anopheles, of the malaria mosquito family, is 
also an absentee. 

Unlike the Occidental, the Japanese does not 
indulge in threats of hell or hopes of paradise, 
nor does he definitely locate the souls of the 
dead in perpetual punishment or amid the joy of 
heaven and bother no more about them. In- 
stead they are left to wander vaguely, craving 
attention and remembrance, and this is beauti- 
fully given by the living. In August, at the 
village of Hakone, which is situated beside the 
lovely lake called Ashi-no-ko, occurs a typical 
feast for the dead. The village is made attrac- 
tive by decorations, and every bereaved house- 
hold, which is about every household since the 
great war, sets out a feast for the souls. This 
lasts out the day. When twilight darkens the 
people become silent and sighing. It is time for 
the ghosts to depart. Countless little floats are 
made — shingle-boats with paper sails, lit by tiny 

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lanterns — and these are set afloat to be wafted by 
the evening breeze away from the village strand. 
And so the many colored lamps dance away into 
darkness until the lights go out and the souls 
have been ferried back to their uncharted shore! 

The song of the Geisha falls on the Occident 
ear something like the whine of the cat-bird with- 
out its discordant squawk. Japanese music is 
querulous and plaintive, lacking sonorousness 
and threnody. It belongs to the tum-tum and 
plink-plunk class without the stirring jar of the 
banjo or the rhythm of the mandolin or guitar. 
One instrument, the Koto, does carry some- 
thing of the tender tone of the harp. It is a 
long, hollow frame of wood, a little curved, 
lying upon the floor before the player, who 
thumbs the heavy strings much as the harpist 
does to produce his soothing sounds. 

Repugnant as it is at first sight to see men 
doing the work of horses, the rickshaw and 
chairmen of Japan are the favored beings in the 
under class. Their earnings will average double 
that of a policeman or letter carrier, while they 
are able to view the income of the ordinary work- 
men with contempt. Getting around is diflicult 

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and uncomfortable in most cases without them. 
The few cab-horses in the greater cities can only 
navigate the wider streets, and the carriage of 
an ambassador in Tokyo must still be preceded 
by a man running ahead to warn the crowd of its 
coming. The rickshaw takes up little more 
width than its motive power and can do no harm 
in a collision. The speed of four miles an hour, 
coupled with the ability to make short cuts, gives 
it a deserved popularity. It is not "a man's job," 
but holds out such lucrative rewards compared 
with anything else as to really affect the labor 
situation considerably. The coolie trots around 
ten hours for seventy-five cents, the highest pin- 
nacle of wage-earning known in working Japan. 
The men are sober and honest, and the rule 
among them seems to be to protect the interest of 
the fare. They keep a warning eye out for errors 
in change and mistakes of ignorance in street- 
standbuying. Afive-cent tipon top of the regular 
fee is a wholesome dividend for the wise traveler 
to pay. Many of the men understand some Eng- 
lish and can speak a few useful words. Withal, 
they possess a sense of humor, a benefaction de- 
nied many of the worthy inhabitants of Nippon. 

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The ingenuity of the government in making 
both ends meet has been extended to the coin- 
age. The largest piece made at the mint is the 
fifty-sen token, equivalent in value to our quarter 
of a dollar. The diagrams show how it has 
shrunk in size since the new fiscal policy became 
necessary, though it is still nearer intrinsic value 
than Uncle Sam's twenty-five-cent piece. The 
change involved a considerable profit to the mint. 




Old tifty-sen 
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Books by eminent foreign thinkers and writers 
are eagerly sought in Japan. Spencer is a fa- 
vorite, with Tyndall and Darwin good seconds. 
The Japanese translators are understood to 
make modifications where there is danger of 
breeding turbulent thoughts in the native 
mind. The power of suggestion is fully rec- 

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ognized and repressed as much as possible. 
Tranquilty of mind on the past of the populace 
must not be disturbed by imported history. 
School-children are taught that our own Revolu- 
tionary heroes were rebels and traitors — regret- 
ably successful. Shakespeare has been carefully 
remodeled to fit decorum and to eliminate disre- 
pect. He usually gets credit for the idea of a 
play and the rest is — Japanese! When staged 
the work of the Bard of Avon is usually localized 
and the characters made Japanese, depicting 
Nipponese emotions rather than, say, those of 
Romeo and Juliet, which would be quite out of 
place in Japan, and would excite much the same 
sort of disgust as Mr. Artemus Ward depicted 
in the Mormon elder who left the " Lady of 
Lyons" in a Salt Lake theater leading his twenty- 
four wives with the remark that " he wouldn't 
sit and see a play where a man made such a 
cussed fuss over one woman." 

Here is an excellent example of Shakespeare, 
a la Japanese, played by a party of promising 
young actors at the Hongo Theater, Tokyo, 
from 5 to 10 P.M., when "Much Ado About 
Nothing" was placed on the boards, remodeled 
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by Mr. Yanagawa, a local novelist of some fame, 
and described for the Japan Advertiser by a 
native reporter: 

"This is not the first English play performed 
in Japanese. 'Hamlet,' 'Macbeth,' 'Othello,' and 
others have already been played by professional 
actors as well as by amateurs. Each one of 
them proved a success, at any rate in respect to 
its cunning adaption to the naive minds of the 
audience. The present play is also a success 
from this point of view. In the first act a party 
of noblemen are represented as they pay a visit 
to the mayor at Kyoto on their way home after 
their investigating trip to Manchuria with regard 
to the apparition of Halley's comet. Here Vis- 
count Kurachi, a member of the party, falls in 
love with the mayor's daughter, and takes coun- 
sel of his partner, Count Seto, who makes a prom- 
ise to act as the viscount at the fancy ball to be 
held that night at the mayor's hall, and thus to 
win the daughter. 

"In the second act the count's promise is 
fulfilled and the viscount gets the mayor's con- 
sent to his wedding. There passes an agree- 
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ment among these three persons that they will 
play a trick to marry Count Ueno, a member of 
the party, with Miss Mio-ko, niece to the mayor, 
who never meets Viscount Ueno without a 
quarrel. In the third act the said trick is car- 
ried out to the exact purpose, and the tattling 
philosopher and blue-stocking are humanized 
enough to fall in love with each other. In the 
fourth act, before the background representing a 
calm moonlight night near the River Kamogawa, 
Kyoto, a drunken man is introduced talking with 
his mate about his success in crossing the match 
of the mayor's daughter. A watch comes out 
then on their scent, and enters to the police 
station. This strife, to the great delight of the 
audience, arouses the real geese in the river and 
also induces the two clerks of the mayor to come 
down upon the scene from the bridge they have 
been just passing over. These two clerks then 
present themselves before the mayor to inform 
him of the plot going on against the match. But 
their tediousness loses them the opportunity to 
break the secret with the mayor, who is busy in 
preparation for the approaching wedding. In 
the fifth act a matrimonial ceremony is carried 
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out at a Shinto shrine. At the end of the cere- 
mony, however, the bridegroom proposes to 
send the daughter back to her father, who is 
misunderstood by the bridegroom. At this the 
daughter swoons. And so the play goes on 
through seven acts. 

"What is regrettable is to find Shakespeare 
turned into a commonplace Japanese play. 
Though we acknowledge much ado on the part 
of the actors as well as the translator to adapt 
the play to a Japanese audience, we cannot 
persuade ourselves that they have done due 
honor to Shakespeare. One of the deficiencies 
of the play is the want of actors who would play 
the parts of female characters. Another defi- 
ciency is that they do not introduce any music 
into the play. There is little to choose beween 
this play performed by professionals and the 
childish plays in foreign juvenile schools, but it 
seems to be popular with the Edok-ko. The 
play is, however, true to its name — ' Much 
Ado About Nothing.' " 



The haughtiest figures in Japan are the coach- 
men and footmen of the embassies. They hold 

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their noses high under their mushroom hats and 
see nothing but the sun. 

The lamenters of Old Japan, with its forms 
and ceremonials, sound like the three gray 
sisters who chanted forever, "Why were the 
old times better than the new ?" They can 
often be heard. But forms and ceremonials 
grow out of lack of real occupation. With pres- 
sure such as prevails in New Japan they must 
necessarily pass away. It used to take about as 
long to drink a cup of tea as it now does to cure 
the leaf for market. 

The tea-room in a Japanese mansion, once a 
place of great ceremonial, still holds its social 
place, though the elaborate forms of the old 
days are much simplified. Tea etiquette in the 
fullest sense is too complicated to describe and 
nearly as difficult to learn as a language. In 
these modern days the new generation has not 
the time to acquire its niceties, and, moreover, 
Japan is drinking Ceylon tea! But in the de- 
sign of the rooms one touch of the old remains. 
The entrance for the guest is an open panel per- 
haps thirty inches square, through which he 
entered into the presence of his host on hands 
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and knees, "a mark of confidence" in the latter, 
as the Japanese naively observe, because in the 
two-sword days it was easy to lop off a head as it 
poked through the orifice into the dimly lighted 
apartment, and more than one gentleman in the 
past met his end in the house of his enemy, 
scorning to save himself by being cowardly 
enough to avoid the risk of accepting an invita- 
tion to drop in and have a cup of tea! 

China and Japan began sending young men 
to the Western world in search of knowledge at 
about the same time, something like forty years 
ago. The difference in viewpoint manifested 
itself on their return. In Japan the graduates of 
Harvard were set to work in positions of re- 
sponsibility where their new knowledge could 
immediately assert itself effectively. The young 
Chinese from Yale were turned into inter- 
preters, secretaries, and semi-dependent posi- 
tions by the sly Manchus and were never given 
a chance to do anything. The same system 
was followed with those who took college courses 
in Europe. Result: Japan administratively is 
concrete, modern, and efficient, while China is 
uncertain and trembling, awaiting in fear the 

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unrolling of her future, tied down by the pig- 
tail, so to speak! 

The Japanese take pride in a belief that they, 
unlike most Easterners and all Africans, are an 
assimilative race, that their blood can blend with 
the Caucasians without degeneration. The result 
seems better where Japanese men wed Cauca- 
sian women, than in the reverse instance. "Are 
we assimilative .^" said the eminent Japanese 
chemist Dr. Jokichi Takamine, of Tokyo and 
New York, repeating a query. "As for that I 
will tell you a story. Once in Japan there was 
a great botanist who spent his time on the hills 
and in the fields looking for novelties in tree and 
plant life. One day, nearing the top of a moun- 
tain, he saw a great serpent swing itself from a 
tree and infold a laborer. He was too distant 
to be of aid, so he sat down to scientifically study 
the phenomenon. In due time the serpent swal- 
lowed the man, and there was in his middle a 
great hump. Then the serpent crept a little 
distance and ate some grass. The hump van- 
ished with singular rapidity and the snake 
swiftly crawled away. The botanist then went 
to the spot, and finding the grass to be a new 

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species filled his haversack with it to study at 
leisure. On his way down the mountain he 
paused at a tea-house for refreshment and 
bought a rice-cake. There was a shelf full of 
these cakes, and bethinking of the properties of 
the grass, he wagered the innkeeper that he could 
eat all of the cakes, which he proceeded to do, 
taking bites of grass between. The innkeeper 
went about his affairs, and finally, hearing no 
more sound, sought his guest. He had vanished, 
but on the bench where he last sat was a heap of 
rice-cakes. You see it was the function of the 
grass to assimilate men, not rice !" 

The liners dash through the Inland Sea from 
Kobe to Moji at the straits of Shimonoseki, en 
route to Nagasaki and the Chinese ports, giving 
but glimpses of its loveliness. Yet here are the 
fairy islands. To cruise from Kobe to Miya- 
jima in an Osaka boat takes but a day of time to 
fill a year of memory. The little steamer glides 
in and out of strange harbors, where its whistle 
affords the only foreign suggestion and where 
craft and trade remain undisturbed Japanese. 
Rice and charcoal in cases of straw are the chief 
cargoes, but silk, tea, and porcelain follow too in 

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a steady flood to reach the world at large from 
Kobe. The steamer slips through passages 
little wider than itself, between terraced hills, to 
beauty spots like Tomo, where the sirens might 
well be expected to dwell; such is the comeliness 
of shore and sea. Temples top the crags and 
winding steps of stone lead from them down to 
the dimpUng sea. The fjords are like rivers, 
and the little towns almost touch elbows, so 
plenty are they. 

Two modern spots intrude: the military center 
at Hiroshima, with its embarking port of Ujina, 
and Kure, the naval depot, described during the 
Russian conflict as a harbor of mystery, where 
under a pall of smoke lay hidden titanic works, 
from which Japan was forging weapons to hurl 
against the world. The steamer gets as close to 
the mystery as an East River ferryboat does to 
the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and there is just as 
much that is mysterious about it. A good har- 
bor, fairly commodious shops, well guarded from 
invasion, this is Kure! 

At Ujina for perhaps a thousand yards the 
beach has been paved on its natural slant with 
blocks of stone, upon which the sampans can 

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grate their noses lightly and lie head on for half 
a length, affording an easy embarkation without 
danger that the soldiers will step overboard or 
fall off the dock and drown according to the style 
affected by our army in its endeavors to get 
somewhere. 




Baron Shibusawa, founder of the first bank, 
still lives, a foremost citizen of Japan. Next to 
him in enterprise and force stands Soichiro 
Asano, head of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha, which 
sends the swift ships to San Francisco. The 
story of their coming together is worth tell- 
ing. When the bank started it was a novelty to 
be tested rather than trusted. People would 
deposit money and promptly withdraw it to see if 
it was really to be had again. But one depositor 
never took out a yen. His account kept grow- 
ing. The struggling Shibusawa noted this 
faithful depositor, but he was unknown to him. 

"Who," he asked of his teller, "is this man 
who is always putting money in and never taking 
it out .?" 

He was told it was a small merchant who dealt 
in fuel and rags. The deposit grew. It became 

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twenty-five thousand yen and speedily enlarged 
to fifty thousand, an unheard-of sum from such a 
source. All this time nothing had been with- 
drawn. "I can stand it no longer," said the 
banker, "I must know this man who is always 
putting in and never taking out. Tell him to 
see me." 

The message was delivered to Asano when he 
came with his next deposit. "I work until 
twelve each night," he said shortly. "I have no 
time for visiting. If he wishes to see me he can 
come to me after that hour." The banker went 
and so began the long relationship, successful 
alike to the two men and for Japan. Neither 
speaks English. Both carry on very large 
affairs. 

To-day the house of Asano, at Shiba, is one 
of the sights of Tokyo. It is the largest 
private edifice in the city, built in purest Jap- 
anese style of unpainted pine so seasoned that 
not a crack or flaw is visible. The logs lay 
five years in water as part of the seasoning 
and were ten years old when taken to the 
saw. The house was fourteen years in build- 
ing. The owner does not live in it, but clings 
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to the cottage long his home, but here his 
friends are entertained with splendor and here 
too is preserved an architecture that befits the 
land. The ceiling panels are of brocaded silk 
with golden threads, and the smooth woodwork 
bears sprays of cherry-blossoms so skilfully 
painted as to rival the flowers of spring. 

Every Japanese wears his family crest upon his 
gown, and this of Asano's is the end of a folded 
fan suggesting the letter Z. "A little invention 
of my own," he said, and with a flirt he threw 
his fan wide open. "See! Thus I widen my 
fortune." The open fan is the fleet-flag of the 
Toyo Kisen Kaisha, and the widened fortune 
reaches around the world ! 



Profane expressions are not to be found in the 
Japanese vocabulary. No one is cursed or 
damned, nor do they swear either by the gods or 
the Great Horn Spoon. Expressions of scorn 
and contempt abound, and certain terms when 
employed reflect upon the other fellow's social 
position. In order that the refined and delicate 
desires of the English and American visitors to 
abuse somebody effectually may be gratified, 
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Messrs. Kelly and Walsh, the Far East pub- 
lishers, include in their Japanese phrase-book a 
series of remarks calculated to relieve such 
feelings and impress the objurgated. Here are 
some of them: 

You're telling lies again. 

Mata uso wo lite iru. 

Why, you're telling lies to my very face. 

Ima, me no mae de uso wo ittan' ja nai ka. 

You liar! 

Uso-tsuki-me! 

You're (or he is) an ill-mannered fellow. 

Buret na yatsu da. 

What do you mean by saying that to me ? 

Dare no mae de so lu koto wo lu nda? 

You had better look out, sirrah! 

Ki wo tsukeru ga ii zo. 

Don't talk rubbish (don't be an ass). 

Baka lu na, or kudaranai koto wo lu na. 

Hold your tongue ! 

Damare! 

Don't interrupt! 

Kuchi wo kikun ja nai zo! 

Stuff and nonsense! 

Baka le ! 

What does this mean .? (angrily). 

Doshita man da? 

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Outrageous ! 

Keshtkaran ! 

Don't go on prating when you know nothing 

about it! 

Ornae wa wakart mo shniai kuse ni, guziiguzu 

shaberu na. 

What are you (or is he) loitering thereabout ? 

Nam wo guzu-guzu magotsutte oru no da? or 

Nam wo u]i-u]i shite i-yagarit n'daro. 

Make haste (and come here)! 

Hayaku konai ka! 

What a noise! I won't have that chattering. 

Takamashii! shabetcha ikenai. 

Mind you don't blab. 

Hoka ye lite shabetcha tkenai. 

I consider silence better than useless chatter. 

Muda na hanashi wo stint yon wa, damatte 

iru ho ga 11 to omoii. 

Don't waste so much time in discussion. 

So kare-kore moshite, hima wo tsuiyashicha 

tkenai yo. 

That won't do; it's no use (trying that game 

on with me). 

Sore wa ikanat, muda da. 

Sore wa ikan , dame da. 

Well, your cleverness in making excuses is 

astonishing! 

lya! omae no li-nuke no jodzu na no m wa, 

osoreitta. 



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Well, you pufF it pretty well! 
lya; herabo ni hotneru ze! 
He is a terrible liar. 
Aitsu wa uso tsuite domo naran. 
Every word that fellow says is a lie. 
Ano hito no lu koto wa, inina uso desu. 
He is such a liar that one cannot depend on a 
word he says. 

Ano hito iva, makoto nt usotsuki de, nam ivo 
nioso to 7710 kcsshite ate ni iva narimasen. 
That man is beneath mention. 
Ano hito wa hanasht ni mo naranai. 
He is (or you are) a slippery fellow. 
Hidokti zurui yatsu da. 

He is (or you are) not to be depended upon. 
Ate ni narimasen. 

He is (or you are) a regular sharper. 
Maru-de katari da. 

He is not a very good sort of person, it 
seems. 

Amari yoku nai jtmbutsu so de gozaimasu. 
He is a person who had better be kept at a 
respectful distance. 

Ano hito nara, kei shite tozakcru ga yoroshiu 
gozaimasu. 

He is as slippery as an eel; utterly unre- 
liable. 

Ano hito tva, hyotannamadzu, tonto shitnari 
ga nai. 

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Such a useless fellow as that is like a cat's tail; 
you might as well be without him as with him, 

Anna yaku ni tatanai htto wa, neko no shippo 

to doyo de, atte mo nakute mo ii. 

He is a quarrelsome fellow. 

Ano hito wa, goku kenkwa ga suki da. 

He is (or you are) a fearful chatterbox. 

Hidoi o shaken da. 

He is a prattler. 

Are wa goku ta-hen no hito da. 

He is (or you are) a nasty fellow. 

lya na yatsu da. 

He is so stupid that he cannot understand the 

simplest thing. 

Ano hito wa gu-don no yatsu de, donna yasa- 

shii koto demo wakaranai. 

It is impossible to argue with him; he is as 

obstinate as he is ignorant. 

Ano hito to wa totemo giron ga dekimasen! — ■ 

mugaku dake no gojo wo motte iru hito da kara. 

That rascal! 

Ano yatsu or Aitsu. 

He is (or you are) an (awful) rascal (cruel). 

Hidoi yatsu da. 

The Japanese written language is a thing quite 
apart from the spoken. There is a forty-eight- 
sound alphabet, but the Chinese ideograph is 
used with it to express the written thought, so 

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that a Chinese book or newspaper can be read 
to some extent by a Japanese. To spell a 
man's name out in EngHsh, as, for example, 
the fine one of Hayashi, is simple enough, and 
pronunciation is easy because there are no 
accents or inflections. But to write it requires 
a complete transformation. Hayashi means 
"forest." So the ideograph takes for its basis 
the Chinese sign meaning tree, and two of these 
side by side make a "forest." Every name 
must have a meaning and not be a mere ex- 
pression of sound or identification. Chinese is 
a less tangled tongue to master than Japanese, 
because when a Celestial shapes a thought for 
speech he sees it in direct order in his mind. " I 
have a new hat" would possess the same gram- 
matical shape in Chinese as in English, while in 
Japanese the noun would come before the verb 
and the pronoun would be lucky to get into syn- 
tax at all. 



It is easy to see Japan. The populous part 
of the country lies in the narrow strip be- 
tween the mountains and the sea that holds and 
feeds the nation. The mountains are very near, 

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always in view and readily reached by road and 
path. Inland plains are few. The Tokaido, 
once the great highway between Tokyo and the 
south, is spanned by rail which touches every 
important point. Water routes are innumerable 
and one can voyage anywhere on the Inland Sea. 
Two weeks will give a tourist an excellent idea of 
the country and fill his mind with visions and 
memories not to be found elsewhere in the world. 
Travelers excite lively interest. The routes 
are well organized so far as beaten paths are con- 
cerned and the stranger can get along far easier 
than he could in the United States, where noth- 
ing is arranged for the tenderfoot or foreigner 
and where the devil takes the hindmost with 
cheerful alacrity. If one is fortunate enough to 
make acquaintances among Japanese bankers 
or business men he will find no limit to their 
courtesy or willingness to afford attention. It 
was somewhat overwhelming to find Japanese 
friends at the depot at a five-in-the-morning 
departure, and at every change in route some 
messenger of good-will, instructed by a distant 
acquaintance, was in attendance to guide the 
strangers carefully through the turns. Thus 
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this long journey was made without couriers 
or interpreters, without mishap or mistake. 

They tackle the English language in all its 
weird complications quite as boldly as they did 
Port Arthur or the Baltic fleet. To them it is the 
hardest of tongues. Yet every grammar-school 
scholar must make it a part of his or her course, 
and the results are surprisingly good. French 
and German are widely taught in the United 
States, but no traveler dependent upon either 
tongue, aside from the accident of meeting a 
fellow-countryman, would fare as well in the 
average American town as the English-speaking 
person does in Japan when it comes to securing 
comprehension of events or desired directions. 
Not that the results are perfect. That would be 
too much to expect. But they are intelligible 
and are accomplished by a polite good-will that 
makes up for a good deal of vocabulary. 

The Japanese who can talk English are more 
numerous than those who can understand it, and 
these latter learned the tongue from lip motion. 
So English should be spoken slowly, with full 
mouth action, if it is to be comprehended. Rapid 
talking leads to a hopeless daze. A few impor- 

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tant Japanese words are easily acquired, and 
when transformed into English text are spelled 
phonetically, so that there are no accents to con- 
fuse the speaker, each vowel getting its full sound, 
no more and no less. But if the traveler is not 
understood he need not despair. Everybody 
will get amiably busy and solve the puzzle some- 
how. It has been observed by some wise man 
that one can travel at ease in Japan with a single 
word of the vernacular, to wit : "I kenai," mean- 
ing, "it won't do." The servitors and miscel- 
laneous citizens keep on trying things until 
something is found that will do, to the joy of 
all concerned. 

Common sense is the governina; thought in 
Japan, as it ought to be even in the United 
States, where noise is sometimes mistaken for the 
best thing. The educators are thinking of sim- 
plifying the complicated written language, made 
more so by the expanding use of Chinese ideo- 
graphs, always an essential part of the national 
text. Of this the leader of Japanese educators. 
Baron Kikuchi, head of the University of Kyoto, 
has this to say: 

"The object of ordinary education is to intro- 
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duce common sense and practical ideas among 
the lower-class people. Is this object fully real- 
ized in Japan ? Of late Chinese characters have 
come to be more and more introduced into our 
language, with the result that study has become 
increasingly difficult. Again, it has become 
the custom among the educated classes to fre- 
quently use Chinese ideographs in all forms of 
congratulatory addresses, which, as a result, 
often cannot be read by even Middle School stu- 
dents." 

The Baron believes that Roman letters should 
be taught in the primary schools with application 
to Japanese words. The railway stations em- 
ploy them and the sign-makers often make rude 
use of our noble tongue. "Feets, corns, nails 
cutter" came pretty near to describing a chirop- 
odist's shop in Kobe, while "The real sadful 
sight. Greater Flood Rarely Known" drew 
crowds to view the moving pictures of the vast 
Tokyo floods at a kinetoscope theater in Yoko- 
hama. 

Hotels managed foreign-fashion are plentiful 
along the routes of travel. Except in Yokohama 
and Kobe, the Japanese own and manage houses 
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for the entertainment of foreigners and do it suc- 
cessfully. It would be hard to find better 
accommodations anywhere than at the Fujiya 
at Miyanoshita, while at Nikko, Kyoto, Tokyo, 
and Miyajima it is possible to be very comfor- 
table at the Japanese managed hotels. It is not 
so easy to find quarters off the lines of travel, 
because Japanese food and customs prevail. 
The inns are beautiful and clean beyond com- 
pare, but the huge Caucasian cannot be com- 
fortable sitting, sleeping, or eating on the floor, 
and the fragile houses create discomfort in the 
thought that they will break into pieces if freely 
used. 



The Mynah bird is a Japanese pet. It is a 
member of the raven or rook family, to which 
Mr. Crow belongs, and is the wisest and strang- 
est of them all, for beyond even the gray African 
parrot it can pick up human speech. The bird 
has a long body and a short tail, dark feathers, 
a crow-like bill, a dash of yellow and white for 
brows, and a round, roguish, and extremely 
intelligent eye. The Japanese love the Mynahs 
and make expert talkers of them. It was queer 

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to walk into the garden before a curio store at 
Miyanoshita and hear a soft voice say "Oha- 
yo!" — welcome — to look in vain for its owner, 
and at last to have a big bird in a cage revealed as 
the speaker, who did not fail to say "Sayonara!" 
— farewell — to the departing visitors. Unlike 
the harsh screechings of the parrot, the Mynah 
speaks with the velvety tones of a Japanese 
maid — -and no speech can be softer than this. 

The white duck dinner-jacket affected in the 
East by the exiled British and, alas, by some 
expatriated Americans is a sartorial shocker. It 
is cut very short, barely touching the rear suspen- 
der buttons, and flares widely in front. A high 
collar and black tie complete the abomination. 
Mark Twain's white suit, which once excited 
New York, was elegance indeed compared 
with this bobtailed garment. It was adapted 
from the hot-weather dress of English naval 
officers. 

There were 2,287 foreigners in Yokohama, 
according to the last census, out of a total 
population of 3 1 5,000, or thereabouts. Of these 
582 were Americans. The foreign element is 
assessed 40 per cent, of the income and other 

51 



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taxes, while they have no voice in local affairs 
except by private influence, which is not great. 
They sometimes think they get small considera- 
tion in view of their taxes. But the figures in- 
dicate rather impressively to the outsider who 
is getting the income and accumulating the 
wealth, and it is not to be wondered that the 
natives look hungrily at the business which 
produces such vast results when compared with 
the earnings of the multitude and endeavor to 
pull a fatter share of it their way. 

High government officials are easy of access 
and singularly direct in manner and methods. 
General the Prince Katsura gives little sign of 
military training or the austerity which prime 
ministers are supposed to assume. He talks 
openly and robustly of matters of national and 
international concern — a man of courage and 
force in every look. Marquis Komura, Minister 
of Foreign Affairs, who made the treaty at Ports- 
mouth, is so familiar with America and Ameri- 
cans that to meet him is like finding an old friend. 
His associate, Baron Ishii, is another statesman of 
high caliber and keen understanding of the rest 
of the earth. Baron Goto, Minister of Com- 

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munications, who runs the railroads, telegraphs, 
and posts, has the manner of a brisk American 
man of business, is easier to talk to than most 
American railroad presidents and far handier to 
get at. He was educated in Germany and spent 
a year in prison under suspicion of having been 
mixed up in a conspiracy. He vindicated him- 
self and fills the one really great administrative 
office in Japan. Baron Matsuo, former gov- 
ernor, and Baron Takahashi, present governor, 
of the Bank of Japan, which handles the na- 
tional finances, are men of wide knowledge and 
singular administrative strength. The latter 
was educated here and knows his United States 
well. They are not men to be led into follies or 
to make mistakes easily. Mr. Juichi Soyeda, 
president of the Industrial Bank of Japan, has 
shown ability of the highest order in banking 
and industrial promotion. Every one of these 
men rose by individual effort and merit. Oppor- 
tunity is as democratic in Japan as in America! 



The government houses itself in European 
fashion and officials wear European clothes. 
This does not apply to boys in the telegraph 

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lic;i(lr|iijiil(:rs, who skid iiroidid on <lo/rs and In 
wavinjf jfarirKMils. 

JJii'yc'Ics air |Mi|)idai and iniicli used. Small 
boys ride iIk m dexl;t;rously despid; wooden fool- 
fr<-,\y and (lowin/f kimonos, tliaf oiifi;lir to fall 
oil III /Ml Miaili'd ii|) in ilic di'iviiifj; chains, hiil 
neve I do. I nl;yo lia. an aiilomohilc association. 

All nioii(7 valiii i', (in ihu biisls of onc-hallof 
AiiK rlian coina/'c, and wa)>cs run IVom onc- 
Iciilh to oiic-lwcnticth. I (d<yo niornin;f ni-ws- 
paper composifors earn l^y.^o p< r m<inili. They 
have a iniKiii. Ni-vv N'oi k |iiinl(i'. earn $^l 
per W(a'k at the same class of work. 

I he bundle is :i woik of art in Japan, and 
<'Vety one cat lies one either wrapped in a scpiaic 
(il (Idlli tied by the ('(iiiKis or III a piickei'- 
ba^ that looks small but holds hall' a ttunkiVil. 
When 'l'o):!;uchi San brings in his wares to sell to 
the ladies he I'omes laden with parcels all closely 
cramped m the S(piares ol cloth, so no pajxM' is 
waMed in wrappiiiji^s and ilie oiiier aspect of the 
package is always seemly, while the covt'iing can 
be used over and over aj^ain. 

Hook knowledf^c of |apan, old and new, can 
lesl be acipiireil by nading Mitford's '/'nlrs 



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and Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain's Things 
"Japanese — the latter author, by the way, being 
a grandson and namesake of that British Captain 
Basil Hall whose observations in the United 
States in the twenties f)f the nineteenth century 
so exasperated our great-grandfathers. 

Japanese business morality is a perennial topic 
in Japan. The editors of English text journals 
published at the trading pf)rts give it much space. 
Native writers and political leaders, like Baron 
Oura, are outspoken critics of the mercantile 
methods of their countrymen. Yet the tone of 
their comments seems unduly severe. The 
chief plaint of the foreign resident is that "the 
Jap is after the money," in sweet disregard of the 
fact that this is what he is there for himself and 
has taken a deal of since Commodore Perry 
pried open the door. His reflections on Japan- 
ese commercial integrity appear to be mainly 
based upon the unwillingness of native traders 
to stand by a bad bargain, as the unflinching 
Chinese will. 

The foreign buyer is to blame for much that 
happens. The experts from the great American 
stores are better at figures than the potters and 

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matting makers and drive hard bargains, with 
incidental losses to the manufacturer, so it is not 
unnatural that he should try to square himself 
by pinching quality and slighting delivery. The 
usual tourists, especially if feminine, have 
dreamed of bargains and low prices until "beat- 
ing down" is the single thought in their minds. 
The wary tradesman therefore elevates his costs 
to meet the demand for concessions and makes as 
few as he can. The wisdom and morality of 
driving sharp trades with a people primarily 
uncommercial need not be commented upon. 
It is enough to say that they have learned 
from their teachers. The incredible quanti- 
ties of valuables in the way of matchless porce- 
lains, incomparable bronzes and lacquers that 
have been taken out of Japan in the last half- 
century at a trifling return to the seller and 
enormous increment to the buyer will furnish an 
example of the foreign eye for business as com- 
pared with the local one. Nor have the Japan- 
ese experiences with foreign contractors been 
pleasant ones. The railroad between Yoko- 
hama and Tokyo is a case in point. Of an easy 
grade along the rice-fields by the sea, its con- 

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struction in foreign hands ran up a bill that 
would flatter even American municipal extrava- 
gance. 

It is pleasant to find that reflection on the 
Japanese trading element is not very pronounced 
among the American residents. With custom- 
ary Yankee philosophy they realize that the day 
of the "good thing" is over and that they must 
compete instead of having their own way. The 
harshest thought usually expressed is that the 
Japanese is too eager to get his pound of flesh, 
always accompanied by the amiable admission, 
however, that he needs it. 

"Why are Chinese merchants so generally 
honest while the Japanese are reputed to be 
otherwise .'"' was asked of a Japanese nobleman 
of high rank. "Well," he replied, "there is a 
reason; in China there is no law and no justice, 
and men must be honest with one another if they 
are to do business at all, while here we have law 
and justice, and — " his smile implied "beat it if 
you can!" "But," he went on, "there is a 
deeper reason. In old Japan the first citizen 
was the farmer, the man who tilled the soil and 
fed the people. After him came the Samurai, 

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the soldier who risked his life to defend his coun- 
try. In next order came the artisan, who took 
wood, metal, and leather and made things that 
were useful. Then followed the fisherman, who 
went out into peril in his little boat to catch 
food for others. But this merchant, this traf- 
ficker, who took that which was yours and made 
it mine for a profit, he was the lowest of the 
low!" 

This social grading is not true now of any class, 
because distinctions have passed away, but lack 
of respect for traders prevailing for centuries 
made them a proscribed group and they lived at 
risk of person and property. This made them 
cunning and grasping, like the Jews of the old 
European cities. It would be strange if it had 
not left an impress existing even now in a coun- 
try where sons follow the footsteps of their 
fathers. Beyond this where money is hard to 
make and losses are difficult to regain trickiness 
readily manifests itself. It must be remembered, 
too, that necessities in the old days were obtained 
by barter on even terms, so that when a trafficker 
intervened and raised the prices of supplies he 
became unpopular. In this contingency he is 
58 



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not beloved in America, where by the usual 
oppositeness we have elevated the mercantile 
and money-making class to the topmost position 
in affairs and pushed the farmer uncomfortably 
near the bottom. After all, in just comparison is 
not the creating agriculturist the first citizen by 
right and merit, and not the merchant or traf- 
ficker, "who takes that which was yours and 
makes it mine for a profit" ? 




Where foreign influence shows most appar- 
ently is in noise and dirt. Our noise and dirt are 
recognized as concomitants of the envied West- 
ern civilization, and noise and dirt appear with 
Oriental improvements. 

Most of the third-class Japanese postmasters 
serve without pay. It is an honor to be asso- 
ciated with the government, and when a cabinet 
officer or a prince visits a village the holder of 
the job gets a front seat at the ceremonies. This 
and the sweet satisfaction of being a part of the 
ruling power is his reward. 

The theater has no social position in Japan, 
but it is popular with the crowd. Really re- 
spectable persons about whom the neighbors 

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might talk do not attend, while the high no- 
bility and the Imperial Household must con- 
tent themselves with the old classic dialogues, 
stiffly recited in the privacy of their homes. But 
a hugeopera-house,theTeikokuza,has been con- 
structed in Tokyo, in which the Imperial House- 
hold is a heavy share-holder. Opera is unknown 
in Japan except to foreigners, and the Japanese 
school of music is unmelodious to the Western 
ear, while the dancing is stiff and formal, being 
confined mainly to posture. But a class of dan- 
cers has been trained for the new opera-house 
on what is hoped to be a line of successful com- 
promise between the native and foreign ideas, 
and the promotors are pleased with the progress 
of the girls, who come from good families. The 
ordinary style of theater is plentiful in the cities, 
and every good-sized village has a playhouse, 
whose fluttering banners are visible from afar. 
The front is of sliding lattice, which is now and 
then pushed wide during the show, which usually 
lasts from 2 until lo p.m., to tempt the passer- 
by with a glimpse. Clogs and sandals must be 
removed. In some houses they are checked at 
the door, and the quantity of foot-gear on view 
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indicates the popularity of the play. In other 
cases the sandals are wrapped in an old news- 
paper and given to the owner to tuck under his 
or her arm until needed for the street. 

The Chinese boy sits at his task of sweeping 
and scrubbing, and sweeps and scrubs with infi- 
nite and minute care. The Japanese cleaner 
takes his swab in hand, and, running on all fours, 
scoots through the halls and calls it cleaning. 

Tree -planting and tree -saving are arts in 
Japan. The mountain-sides are covered with 
little pines set out in rows, and the foresters keep 
the grass cut lest it smother the youngsters. 
Trees of size are always being shifted about. 
After being moved they are braced with timber 
to safeguard against being overthrown or twisted 
by the wind, and the trunks are wrapped in straw 
to keep the moisture from evaporating too rap- 
idly and endangering life in the new locality. 
Often much more timber is employed to hold a 
tree in position than it contains itself. Many of 
the big pines lean over highways at such angles as 
to be liable to uprooting, but these are carefully 
upheld by heavy standards, and so preserved to 
add to the beauty of the roads. 

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Japanese deftness and politeness have no 
better illustration than in the deposition of the 
ruler of Korea and the annexation of his king- 
dom to Nippon. No unkind words were spoken, 
and though the jail doors swung rather frequently 
to admit patriotic objectors and the press was 
choked, it was considered a precaution to save the 
patient. The Emperor's throne was taken from 
under him, but replaced by an agreeable cushion, 
and his title became "The Retired Emperor." 
Nothing so harsh as "deposed" got into the 
occasion. Next the Japanese newspapers sug- 
gested that the royal houses of the two countries 
should intermarry, to start a mingling of blood 
between the races, who are expected to be one 
for the future. 

Pussy is beloved in Japan. The sleeping cat 
carved over the portal of the huge Shinto Temple 
at Nikko keeps the rodents away from the tomb 
of the great leyasu. In nearly every house- 
hold the cat curls up in sweet content upon 
the mats, and not infrequently staid citizens 
amble along with kitty under the arm for an 
evening stroll. Three kinds of cats were in evi- 
dence — one bobtailed, like the Manx; another 

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the plain household animal the world over, but 
marked in white and yellow and black, and the 
third a fine bronze tiger variety with a shorter 
tail than the domestic sort and seemingly bred 
from the wild strain found in the mountains of 
the north. This specimen is very handsome, 
but not nearly as large as its wild progenitors. 
The latter are hunted for their skins, which make 
fine lap-robes. 

There are seven hundred and t\venty names in 
the Japanese "Who's Who." 

The barber-shop is the most up-to-date spot in 
a Japanese village, surpassing by far those of 
France and Italy. Good chairs and the best of 
tools are in use, and Figaro himself could not do 
a better job of hair-cutting. 

The directories show something like twelve 
hundred heads of missionary families in Japan 
and the territories under its jurisdiction. The 
visible results of their labors are not imposing. 
Consular opinion toward them is that they start 
trade and trouble in about equal proportion. All 
agree that life on the whole is pleasant for them. 
Numerous servitors are cheaply had, with a little 
gospel thrown in, and they enjoy the authority 

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of ruling their child-like flocks. But the great 
variety of sects bewilders the Oriental mind, 
which is easily confused when there are too many 
models to pick from, and none of them make 
what could be honestly called effective progress. 
The Methodists, as usual, are the most efficient, 
and maintain a large publishing house in Tokyo. 
Yet the best observers are a unit in the belief that 
a central dominating religion would be of great 
value in Japan, softening the social system and 
aiding in producing what the country lacks, a 
cohesive middle class. Unfortunately the weak 
American denominations known as Unitarians 
and Universalists are the only ones whose tenets 
would not offend the national spirit. Ancestor- 
worship is a cardinal thing in Japan. The 
Japanese lives only to honor his forbears and to 
preserve their honorable line. To this end all 
others must subserve. Thus adoption of male 
children is a duty to ancestry, from which some 
queer jumbles result. For instance, the Prince 
Tokugawa, who recently visited America, is not 
a Tokugawa at all, but a distant connection 
adopted into the family before a son was born. 
Then the son came, but he is not the prince, the 

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primary adoption having filled the place of the 
oldest! So creeds holding that the unconverted 
must be in hell cannot become popular in Japan. 
"Where are the souls of my ancestors ?" is a 
question before which the ablest missionary 
quails. 

Neither Buddhism nor Shintoism, the two 
religious elements in Japan, maintain what can 
be called a church organization. The munici- 
palities keep the temples in repair after a fashion, 
and the priests subsist on the humble offerings 
of the worshipers, who kneel for prayers. Yet 
there is a religious, or, rather, moral weekly 
press in Japan something on the lines of the 
Outlook without the contributing editor. 



The conscription, which certainly works for 
the general welfare in Germany and France, 
being in effect a college course for many classes 
that would go dully to their round of toil, is 
not advantageous in Japan, where the rich 
are almost too few to count and the middle 
class is negligible, and where social distinctions 
are not measured by money. As a banker 
remarked, the Japanese village folk are very 
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frugal and highly respectable. The young men 
join the garrisons in the great cities and soon 
find their way to the tea-houses and the Yoshi- 
wara, breeding extravagance and bad habits, 
which they take back to the villages after their 
period of service, much to the displeasure of 
the elders. Japanese villages are controlled 
very largely by public sentiment as enunciated 
by these village elders, grave old gentlemen, who 
discuss and concur. When they have con- 
curred the result is the law of the village and 
the crystallized opinion of the community. The 
central government takes great care to sound 
this form of opinion, and when it once gets a 
consensus is pretty sure to be sustained if it 
follows the trend that prevails. So underneath 
the monarchy, despite the limited franchise, the 
force of public opinion is always at work and it 
is always heeded. Thus while but three and 
one-third per cent, of the population in Japan 
have the right to vote, owing to the income tax 
qualification of fifteen yen (.^7.50 a year tax), 
they are heard from nearly if not quite as 
effectively as if they voted. "Public senti- 
ment," observed Count Komura, Minister of 

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SURFACE JAPAN 

Foreign Affairs, "is easily ascertained in Japan, 
and so a united purpose is readily attained." 

It is certain, however, that an extension of the 
franchise must come in the near future, because 
education is spreading. The tens of thousands 
of students pouring out of the universities will 
soon leaven the mass, and the idea that income 
is to be the standard of qualification for taking 
part in public affairs will be swept away. 

Japanese babies do cry. The loudest yelping 
heard came from a bit of one riding in a baby- 
carriage, instead of clinging monkey-fashion to 
mamma's back. When mamma puts baby 
down she lowers it on its knees instead of the 
posterior, as our Western mammas do. This is 
to teach its tender ligaments to bend easily for a 
lifelong squat in a land without chairs or tables 
and where the floor is the only resting-place and 
the heels are the main support. To an Occidental 
sitting on the plain floor is an agony; with one 
cushion it is barely endurable, though two make 
the attitude quite tolerable. In some houses 
tables a foot high are provided, but the real thing 
makes it requisite to eat off the floor. So con- 
firmed is the method of sitting that many con- 
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servatives tuck their legs under them when riding 
in the street railway cars, a grateful practice, as 
it aids in keeping the aisle clear, in contrast 
with the cross-legged chevaux-de-frise of an 
American street car. On the railroads most 
Japanese prefer to ride in their stocking feet, 
sitting on their heels. Abraham Lincoln's theory 
that a man's legs ought at least be long enough 
to reach from the rest of his person to the ground 
does not apply in Japan. 

In all the first-class cars on the government 
railroads slippers are provided for passengers 
who wish to drop their clogs or take off their 
shoes. The slippers bear the sign manual of the 
railroad painted on the upper in a black "T." 

There are three grades of inebriety in Japan, 
to wit : plain drunk, honorably drunk, and drunk 
as mud. The first can happen to anybody, the 
second involves a certain degree of distinction, 
and the last is vulgar stupefaction. 

It was W. B. Yeats who said that he found his 
first hope for the revival of Ireland in the peasant 
cottages at Drogheda, where the people were 
singing the old Druidic and Erse fairy songs 
instead of the balderdash of the London music- 

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halls such as he heard in the poor homes of Eng- 
land. So it is in Japan. The verse-makers are 
singing of the cherry-blossoms and the plum-trees 
and of the joys of self-sacrifice and devotion. 

The Japanese love of the cherry-blossom is not 
alone for its pink beauty and soft perfume, but 
because it succumbs so readily to nature's call. 
Unlike the rose which resists with thorn and well- 
bound blossoms, the petals of the cherry-bloom 
fall at the tenderest touch and give up life at the 
slightest sigh of the wind, thus conforming to a 
Japanese sentiment that one should die readily 
as a duty after doing their best for others ! 

Sentiment is the most dangerous thing in the 
world. They raise large quantities of it in 
Japan. Like dust in the air, harmless within 
itself, an element of heat introduced at the right 
moment produces a tremendous explosion. 

The pipe is in universal use, though the cigar- 
ette is in frequent evidence. Men and women 
alike carry a smoking outfit of pouch, tobacco, 
and pipe. The latter is of metal, with the small 
bowl taken from the Chinese, but, unlike the 
latter's long and heavy stem, a short and light 
one suffices. Three whiffs is about the limit of 

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the smoke. Then the ashes must be knocked 
out, a fresh wad of the stringy, dry Japanese to- 
bacco inserted in the bowl, Ht, whiffed, and dust- 
ed every five minutes. It is easier than perpetual 
cigarette-rolling and the stem takes up the nico- 
tine. Indeed, it clogs rather easily, and so the 
pipe cleaner is a noticeable street-worker. His 
stand is on wheels and carries a small metal 
boiler with a head of steam strong enough to feed 
a shrill whistle which announces his presence 
and supplies a means for scalding out the con- 
gested stems. 



While Kobe, but an hour away by trolley, is a 
shipping port of immense consequence, being 
among other things the Standard Oil center in 
Japan, Osaka is the great Japanese harbor. It 
teems with commerce that is native. Little 
steamers from coast ports and the Inland Sea 
crowd the docks, and the canals are Broadways 
of boat traffic. Sampans are thick as trucks in a 
crowded American street, and a motor - boat 
service carries passengers about the town. Fac- 
tories are plentiful, and a pall of black smoke 
hovers over the vicinage. The 160,000 tons of 

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Osaka Shosen Kaisha (The Mercantile Steam- 
ship Company) have headquarters here. Steam- 
ers are always going and coming. Porters' carts 
pack the streets. It is the Chicago of Japan, 
with suggestions of Fall River and Indianapolis. 
More than a million Japanese live, move, and 
have their being without foreign contact or aid. 
Kobe's foreign colony is large. Another hour 
away is Kyoto, oldest and most Japanese of all 
the cities and most beautiful and interesting. 

The Westerner who goes East by Suez touches 
Egypt, India, the Straits Settlements, and China, 
and picks up new habits as he goes along. 
These affect his relations with the servitors more 
and more adversely as he follows the sun. A 
wise Japanese friend who spent a long term in 
a steamship office at Kobe said: 

"I could always tell what road a man came 
East by the way he treated servants. If by Suez 
and China he paid the rickshaw man two-thirds 
of his demand and kicked him if he complained. 
If by the Pacific he smiled, gave him more than 
his charge and made friends with him." 

Japanese Christmas cards are made up some- 
times like miniature folding screens, with all the 

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artistic care bestowed upon the full-sized article, 
dotted with gold-leaf and with graceful birds 
flitting through low-limbed forests of scarlet 
maples against a silver sky. 

Japan is the summer resort of the foreigners 
from the Chinese ports and the Malay Penin- 
sula, and heat-worn Americans from Manila 
find it a haven of rest. 

Window-glass is coming into considerable use 
in Japan, replacing paper in the outer house 
panels, though often paper has to be pasted over 
it to keep the neighbors from breaking it un- 
thinkingly, under the impression that the lattice 
is open. Some of the windows in the older 
third-class railway cars have red or white 
streaks of paint across them to prevent pas- 
sengers unaccustomed to glass from sticking 
their heads through the transparency. 

Somebody or something is always being 
washed in Japan, and as the drainage is in but 
half-closed gutters, the towns smell like Phila- 
delphia or Baltimore on wash-day, with a little 
joss-stick odor thrown in for extra flavoring. 
Little children are bathed and scrubbed to an 
extent quite beyond any standard set elsewhere, 
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but their cunning noses are not wiped as often 
as they should be. In mountain towns like Nik- 
ko the water supply rushes in stone gutters along 
both sides of the street. The popular way of 
washing a baby is to pull its kimono up over its 
head and souse the rest of its person in the flow- 
ing stream. As everybody washes, the water 
gets a little darker the farther it flows, but there 
is so much of it that the contamination is slight. 
The house supply in the hills is carried every- 
where in pipes made of the universal bamboo 
with the joints knocked out. These natural 
tubes span ravines and leap across rivers, while 
fountains spurt and bubble in almost every 
Hakone home. 

A Japanese grandmother with one baby on 
her back, a second on her arm, and pushing 
an empty baby-carriage of American pattern 
was an interesting sight in Kyoto. 

Japanese babies ride pick-a-back. Everybody 
totes one — mammas, papas, and brothers and 
sisters, big or little. Often the carrier is but one 
size larger than the carried. Filipino babes ride 
astride the hip encircled by mother's slender 
right arm. 

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SURFACE JAPAN 

The widow of Lafcadio Hearn, a Japanese, 
lives in Tokyo with her children. She is in 
good circumstances, and the boys will be well 
bred and educated. Hearn's books are growing 
in popularity among the English-reading Japan- 
ese, who realize that he has served much of their 
literature in such a setting as no other writer, 
save Mitford, ever gave (and even he could give 
it no such color as did the half Greek, half Irish 
born writer, shaped in the hard school of Ameri- 
can newspaper shops). 

In two thousand miles of japan but one beggar 
asked for alms, and he was a cripple, garbed in 
the uniform of a United States sailor, with the 
cap-band bearing the name of the old frigate 
Franklin, on which Admiral Farragut went 
around the world after the Civil War, who was 
gleaning his wretched earnings in the streets of 
Yokohama. 

Instead of the clay, starch, and sugar that 
form the base of American confectionery, the 
Japanese candy-makers use the flour of a bean. 
This goes even into pastes and jellies. So the 
candy is oversweet, as a rule, and to the Western 
palate has a sickish flavor. Candy stores are 
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plentiful and confectionery is much consumed. 
Japanese sugar comes in large crystals and is 
very pure. It is refined from Formosan cane. 
The first impulse obeyed when one takes a 
chair to ride on men's shoulders across the 
mountains from Miyanoshita to Hakone is to 
get out and walk; the second, as the path grows 
steep, is to crawl back into the chair again and 
stay there. Four men take up their plump 
American burden and toddle away with it lightly 
over forty-five-degree trails studded with rolling 
rocks and rarely pause for breath. The chair is 
swung from two bamboo poles about six feet 
long, and the four little men handle the two 
hundred pounds usually involved with ease. 
They walk inside the poles, with the outer shoul- 
der under the load, so shifting becomes easy as 
the burden irks. With a ready toss and a single 
side step the men change poles without stopping 
or jarring the passenger. The Japanese are 
carried curled in a swinging bag suspended from 
a single pole sustained by two men, who shift 
shoulders with the help of a stout staff which 
holds it while they shunt the load. A Japanese 
woman will tuck herself and a child with sundry 
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bngs^agi' into a space incredibly small aiul sit so 
tied until the slow journey entls without a sign 
of chafing. Seven miles with but three stops is 
the schedule to Hakone. 

A brccch-clout, a paper umbrella, and a 
cigarette form the popular summer costume in 
rural and suburban Japan, where, by the way, 
they have a saying, "from breech-clout to breech- 
clout, from irreat-grandfather tc^ trreat-jirand- 
son," which is a good ecpiivalent for our own 
"from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves in three 
generations." 



The Butterfly of llokusai which Whistler 
borrowed and made his t)wn was the moth of 
the silkworm, the most valuable resource known 
to Japan. The lustrous fiber which wraps it 
before birth forms the finest fabric worn by 
women, and nowhere do the weavers work the 
woof more deftly. The rattle of the Jacquard 
looni may not be heard in Japan, but all about 
Kyoto the distaffs turn thegossanier into thread, 
and this in time the hand-looms make into cloths 
so delicate that they seem to be fashioned out of 
mist. rhe matchless Hindu muslin, o( such 

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fineness that a dress pattern may be rolled into a 
napkin-ring, has a close counterpart in the filmy 
silks of Kyoto. 

The mulberry is not allowed to grow to the 
dignity of a tree. Instead the root is kept busy 
sending up shoots, which in turn are cut off 
to feed the gorging worms which produce the 
great staple of Japan. The nicest care is 
taken in raising and feeding the leaves, for does 
not each leaf mean another silver strand for 
my lady's gown and not even a thread can be 
wasted in this land of narrow earnings. 

Pongee silk is spun from the cocoon of a wild 
worm that is found chiefly in Manchuria and 
feeds on the leaves of the willow. It is the 
standard cloth for summer clothes in the Far 
East, being light, strong, comely, and washable. 

The water of the River Kamogawa at Kyoto 
lends itself to fabrics. So the silks and piece 
goods of the city are famous for their sheen. 
The bleachers work in the river-bed. Such 
shadowy silks and such rich embroideries come 
nowhere else from the hand of man, while cottons 
are colored to shame the print-makers of the 
West. The river is a great part of the life of the 

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town, though most of its waters are drawn off 
into canals. The sheds of the workers are 
sought for coohiess in the hot season, and at 
night the river-bed is gay with colored lanterns, 
and festive parties eat, drink, and make merry 
amid the shallow ripples. 

Above the city the long rapids of the Hodzu 
through the mountains afford a trip that can be 
made exciting at the right stage of the water. 
Deep skiff-like boats, with narrow seats, follow 
the rushing waters from a station on the railway, 
fifteen miles away, to the outskirts of the city. 
The river rushes between great crags and tower- 
ing peaks, dodging ledges and boulders that 
threaten wreck at every turn when the river boils 
with drip from the mountain torrents. But 
when the flow is low it becomes a dreamy drift, 
past scenery fashioned by the giants, the de- 
light of a summer day, leaving the memory of a 
dream! 

The American window-screen man should get 
busy in japan. The irrigated rice-fields and the 
miniature garden lakes breed a small but lively 
mosquito. Unlike other things Japanese, he 
sings and is much like his Jersey prototype, but 

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his presence and the absence of screens necessi- 
tates the use of woven nettings over sleeping- 
couches. These exclude the air and require 
skill in manipulation to keep the skeeter from 
getting inside, where once installed he becomes 
invincible! 

The fan takes the place of the handkerchief 
in Japan, except so far as the proboscis is con- 
cerned. Its use evaporates the moisture from 
the face which elsewhere is wiped away with 
linen, and it lends grace to the hand, which is 
a clumsy thing when idle. 

Things animated are usually tenderly treated. 
The birds and wild varmints are unafraid. Mr. 
Karasu, the crow, who is wiliest of birds in the 
West, loafs about the streets, skipping between 
the legs of the children, quite as much at home 
as any other two-legged denizen. In the morn- 
ing he ambles about the chimney-pots in the 
cities, or caws comfortably from the ridge-pole 
of the country cottage, warning his friends the 
people that day has come. He leers impudently 
at the passer-by and flirts his feathers in safe 
content. He knows he will never be called 
upon to swing by one leg from a stake in the 

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corn-fickl, a warning lo the rest of" his kind. Big 
butterflies flutter about sniffing the fragrant 
lilies, but only the littlest boys try to scare them 
away. The frogs trill gaily in the shades of the 
garden pools, knowing they are welcome visitors. 
I.i/ards of hron/e and steel stroll leisurely across 
the highway or sleep on sunny rocks by the road- 
side, for all the world as if inlaid by some skilful 
artist. Even Ka, the mosquito, is not whacked, 
but is wafted away gently by the ever-ready fan. 
The goldfish in captivity are treated as favored 
guests and the caged birds are petted like chil- 
dren, while the little boys carefidly feed their 
young with bran paste, filling the wide mouths 
from a tiny shovel. Patience I'ules in Japan 
with resulting politeness in and to ail concerned. 
Still societies for the prevention of cruelty to 
animals have come into being in the cities, where 
the treatment of beasts of burden is not always 
kind, a change brought about perhaps by the 
imported pressure of foreign haste. 

There are thirty kinds of sparrows in Japan. 

The birds are much beloved by the people. 

They have a variety of plumes, but are of the 

same si/e and appearance, with red bills and 

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figures about three-quarters the weight of the 
familiar and unwelcome English bird. The 
black specimen is esteemed as a singer. 

The native dress for man in Japan is delight- 
fully comfortable. The iron collar of the West 
does not cinch the neck nor do the accursed 
cuffs torture his wrists. No slab of starch op- 
presses his manly bosom, nor do suspenders irk 
his shoulders. He has no "pants" to wrinkle 
or climb above his ankles. Instead the robe 
rests lightly, with open, flowing sleeves and 
plenty of room about the throat. For women 
the West would seem to provide the better garb, 
except for its grace and beauty. The folds over 
the chest are heavy, and the obi, which takes the 
place of the corset about my lady's waist, winds 
it in an iron-like embrace. Its stiffly brocaded 
stuff" is fully nine feet long, and all this must be 
doubled and wrapped about a twenty-four-inch 
form. It is wound as tightly as any corset can 
be laced and bears beside a thick and heavy pad 
on the small of the back. The eflPect is fetching, 
but the dress is trying and hot. The skirt 
troubles are about the same. The crape mate- 
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commonly used by Occidental dressmakers. 
No lady can eat a big dinner with an obi on, but 
must feed bird-fashion. 

The gramophone is dubbed the "Nippono- 
phone" in Japan. It seems popular. Its music 
comes closer to the whining squeak of the 
Geisha girls, so dear to the Japanese ear, than 
any other sound except that of the infernal 
Scotch bagpipes. A howl, a moan, a squeal, 
and a tear form the burden of a Geisha air. 



It is thirty-seven years since the Samurai gave 
up their swords and sold the blades for bread, 
but the memory of shining steel still lingers in 
Japan. The commonplace European weapon 
is worn by the regular officers, but now and then 
one sees a short knife suggesting the old pattern 
and can venture the hope that in the inevitable 
reaction from the foreign ways so eagerly fol- 
lowed now will come a return of the old arts, 
and that the sword-maker will share in the re- 
naissance. Damascus and Toledo had their 
day and it never came back again, but their 
empires died, and this is not so in Japan. Surely 
the soul of Masamune, greatest of steel forgers, 

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must still be incarnate somewhere, and again his 
anvil shall ring! But the noble blades are rare. 
Collectors and museums possess them all over 
the world. Of those to be bought the good are 
few and costly, and the poor are not worth buy- 
ing. The etiquette of the sword is not lost, and 
fortunate is he who obtains one by gift. In the 
Occident the present of a knife is held to cut 
friendship, but in Japan it cements regard. 
The blade is given in the belief that the recipient 
can be trusted not to use it against the giver! 
It is a mark of confidence and esteem. 

With an instinct of kindness that does not 
forget the long-instilled economics of the land, 
the Japanese take singular care of the blind, not 
in charity, but in usefulness and position. They 
enjoy a monopoly by state decree of the mas- 
seur's profession, which is set aside for them as a 
class, and beyond this, they are the chief musi- 
cians. No luncheon or dinner is complete with- 
out its bevy of dancers and the musicians. Here 
the blind come with their strange string instru- 
ments, thrumming a dim threnody to the slow 
steps of the Geishas or accompanying the cat- 
like songs. Their faces light up and the vibra- 

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tions visibly cheer their souls. The comfort of 
the mind shut in is thus served and the well- 
being of the player is attended to, for he or she 
has much occupation and proper pay. 

The lotus flower, in pink and white gorgeous- 
ness, with its majestic leaves, blooms everywhere 
in August amid the rice-fields. It is cultivated 
as a vegetable. These lotus eaters do something 
more than dream! But in its utility beauty is 
not despised. The borders of the rice-plots are 
marked with the plant and its broad arrow 
leaves, and when the blossoms come they out- 
line the green squares with lines of floral loveli- 
ness. The great Ueno Park at Tokyo contains 
twenty acres given over to the lotus, a filling 
feast for the eye. 

Moving-picture shows have invaded the coast 
cities of Japan. The police carefully censor the 
films. Those showing kissing scenes are pro- 
hibited as being detrimental to public morals, 
and a pictorial farce showing how two slick 
burglars outwitted the police was suppressed 
as being likely to engender disrespect for the 
guardians of the peace. Disrespect is something 
not to be tolerated in Japan by the established 

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authorities. It seems to be making some head- 
way despite their efforts. 

Meat is still little eaten in Japan, but "Beef 
Store" is an occasional sign in the cities. Fish 
and rice continue to be the staple articles of diet. 
But good vegetables are plenty. Eggplant is 
largely raised and sweet potatoes are found on 
every farm. The Japanese sweet potato is pur- 
ple in its outer color and full of strings. Onions, 
beans, radishes, and the like are on sale in every 
stall, while the fruit shops compare with the 
average in New York. The choicest peaches 
are grown; the trees are kept small and the fruit 
ripens incased in little paper bags. The pears 
look like russet apples, are woody and have no 
flavor, but are full of juice that is expressed and 
carbonated into a champagne cider that would 
be popular in America. The Japanese water- 
melon has a thin rind and the red meat fills it 
closely. It reaches about half the size of the 
Georgia variety, but has all the qualities of juice 
and sweetness that go with the best Southern 
specimens. It is sold in slices at the stands just 
as the American fruit is retailed and is fully as 
copiously consumed. From the food stand- 

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point outside of meat and milk the Japanese 
household has the choicest of supplies. The 
gardens are wonderful. Gauged by the cost of 
their food supply in quality at New York 
prices, the Japanese live extravagantly. 

The taste of fish and vegetable eating genera- 
tions finds meat and milk offensive to the palate, 
and this has to be educated. Sheep, goats, and 
Swiss cattle would enrich the wasted uplands if 
their products were in any local demand. An- 
goras would exterminate the bamboo grass and 
softer herbage for the cattle would follow its 
destruction, but goat and mutton meat are 
particularly off^ensive in flavor, and a great revul- 
sion in habits must come before the area of soil 
productiveness through stock-raising can be 
enlarged. As it is, but 14.37 P^"^ cent, of the 
land feeds Japan's fifty millions, with much 
help from the resisting sea. 

Kobe is a meat center. Here to cheapen the 
supply the foreigners organized a "beef club." 
It reduced the cost, but the cooks required a 
couple of yen a month more to make up for lost 
commissions from the discarded butcher. Con- 
densed milk from the United States, and particu- 

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larly Canada, is growing into large importation. 
The popular consumption of the cheaper Ceylon 
teas, the Japanese being exported to gain a bet- 
ter price, has brought with it the use of milk. 
Now travelers can buy it, properly liquefied, hot 
in bottles. 

In Japan it is not the full dinner-pail but 
the full lacquer-box that feeds the workman. 
At tiffin time no battered tin gives up the con- 
tents of bread and coffee, but out from its clean 
wrapping of cloth comes a lacquered box about 
eight inches square and say three inches deep 
packed with snowy rice and savored with a 
variety of pickles and beans, with perhaps a 
slice or two of fish. The quantity is consider- 
ably larger than that usually found in the Ameri- 
can dinner-pail, and, kind for kind considered, 
the cooking and quality are better. Tea can be 
had of the swarming venders for half a cent. 

Railway luncheons costing from five to twelve 
and one-half cents, with two cents for tea, 
which includes pot and cup, are to be had at 
every station. The best form is a pine box full 
of hot rice mingled with freshly cooked fish and 
the usual pickles of seaweed or bamboo sprouts. 



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This costs twelve and one-half cents, and will 
feed two people — not Japanese. The latter in- 
dividually consume a boxful with calm content. 
The price includes chop-sticks and a toothpick, 
neatly sealed in a paper envelope. 

There is no pie in Japan. Once in a while 
the word appears on the bill of fare at the hotels 
affected by foreigners, but it is only a word. 
The article produced is a bit of over-shortened 
pastry sitting on the edge of the plate, while at a 
respectful distance a dozen fat cherries roll 
around lonesomely. 

Fish, fruit, and vegetables are always good at 
hotels. Chicken, duck, and turkey are excel- 
lent. The beef is passable, but the ham and 
bacon usually have a romantic flavor. 

The tea shrub suggests the clumps of box- 
wood along the old-fashioned garden paths in 
the United States. It stands in rows of round- 
topped, dark-green bushes, perhaps three and a 
half feet high, with an abundance of close- 
growing twigs upon its branches, from which the 
leaves sprout in the spring. Only new growth 
is taken, and this does not involve picking a 
quarter of the leaves upon a plant. The season 



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for gathering begins in April and lasts about six 
weeks. It is a sort of holiday time, because all 
hands can work sociably and pleasantly together 
harvesting the leaves. The different grades 
merely represent different stages in the growth 
of the foliage. The old leaves have no flavor at 
all when taken from the bush and tested with 
teeth and tongue, unlike our aromatic plants, 
such as mint and pennyroyal. In Ceylon, where 
tea-growing has made enormous strides in 
European hands, the picking season is almost 
continuous, and there being no winter, the 
natural checking of the plant is replaced by 
pruning. Japan is a land of seasons like our 
own. The best tea district is that about Uji. 
Chop-sticks in China are permanent domes- 
tic utensils like our own knives and forks, and are 
made of ivory, bone, or ebony wood. In Japan 
they are supplied new with each meal and are 
made of pine. The two are cut from one piece 
which is left lightly joined at one end to show 
that they have never been used before. Fancy 
inlaid sticks are kept in stock for use in handling 
confections, but meals are eaten with the little 
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The rice grain is a pampered plant in Japan. 
It will not grow except in a lesser upland variety, 
unless its roots are bathed in water, and to this 
end the rivers are robbed until their beds lead 
barren to the sea. Sown thickly to secure 
sprouting, it must be transplanted, and when 
transplanted must be fertilized as no other 
cereal in the world is known to be. The night 
soil of the unsewered cities and the villages is 
collected after dark by the swart coolies in care- 
fully sealed wooden tubs and transported to 
the farms, which crowd even into the unbuilt 
spots of the cities, to be scattered each day 
upon the soil. The water from the streams is 
coaxed from terrace to terrace and the green 
blades are always afloat. Where gravity or the 
siphon will not work, quaint water-wheels are set 
into the sluices, on which the farmer — and often 
his wife — turn as a treadmill, lifting the fluid to 
the needed level. Everywhere huge undershot 
wheels are turning, running the rude stamps that 
remove the hulls. The fields are dotted with 
what seem to be moving mushrooms, the wide, 
round hats of the husbandmen and women toil- 
ing in the pasty soil weeding steadily, because 
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rice will have no idle neighbors robbing the 
richness of the ground! Man is its slave, and 
woman, and even the unruly rivers are dyked 
and imprisoned in its thrall! Now the nitrates 
are coming in a great tonnage from Chile and 
Peru to further feed the greedy grain. 

Japanese farmers sell their best rice to the 
exporter to feed the rich Chinese and Hindus, or 
to the well-to-do in the cities, and eat the inferior 
quality of wheat and other minor grains. Poor 
quality Chinese rice is imported for coolie con- 
sumption. 



Three types are visible in Japan, the round- 
head coolie, the square head, with the large 
brain-box above the ears of the usual Japanese, 
and a third with aquiline features, pointed chin, 
easily parted hair and skin as white as the 
Caucasian where not exposed to the weather. 
These last are not numerous, yet are frequently 
enough found to be noticeable. They are taller 
than the average, ranking well up to European 
stature, and one and all give evidence of high 
intellectuality and superiority in manners and 
cultivation. Now and then one encounters a 

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heavily bearded man of rather a German cast, an 
undoubted offshoot of the aboriginal Ainus of 
Yezo, who are white men. But about sixteen 
thousand of them survive. 

There are three great Daibutu, or statues of 
the Divine Buddha, in Japan, at Kamakura, 
Nara, and Kyoto. The second of these in size 
and symmetry is that at Kamakura, an hour 
away from Yokohama, on the way to the naval 
station at Yokosuka and the beautiful island of 
Enoshima. The road winds through the village 
and turns into a little park, where the trees hide 
the great figure from the earliest glance, so that it 
grows slowly into fullness before the eye. Here 
for six hundred years, in storm and shine, with 
hands folded into cups, the thumbs turned out- 
ward and upward, Siddartha has sat in bronze, 
the symbol of tranquillity for all the Eastern 
world. The great Happiness of Endless Rest 
smiles from his lips and radiates from the eyes. 
Here is a figure that has abolished care and 
ceased to trouble even about paradise! The 
statue is hollow, and little altars stand within 
bearing candles whose flames are never allowed 
to die, and where a copper penny buys a prayer! 

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Roadside shrines are frequent in Japan, where 
the good-will of the gods is secured by adding a 
stone to the heap accumulated through the years, 
so saving the single sen needed at a temple. 

Surely the gods must dwell in Nikko! It lies 
at the feet of the mountains, yet far above the 
plains, that border the sea. The strange angu- 
larities of the Japanese hills are softened by the 
gigantic cryptomeras, primeval trees in aspect, 
that here have escaped in a measure the destruc- 
tive hands of men. They stand along an avenue 
twenty-seven miles in length in a colossal colon- 
nade created by a faithful retainer whose pover- 
ty kept him from making gifts to his lord, but 
for which, the legend attests, he made amends 
in devotion and diligence by planting this noble 
line of cedars, now, after three hundred years, 
grown so closely together as to almost make a 
wall of wood, and so lofty that they seem to 
touch the sky as the eye strains upward through 
the deep caiion created by the ancient growth. 
Beyond the town the natural forests make the 
mountains magnificent, while between the crags 
the temples crowd, and about the temples al- 
ways the vast and god-like trees! 

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The temples are little more than shrines and 
wonder places where the priests keep pleasant 
guard and give smiling welcome to the slender 
crop of coin left by the benefaction seekers and 
the visitors from afar. The collection-boxes in 
front of the temples are covered with a grill of 
square bars set at an angle like the cow-catching 
devices at Western railway crossings. The 
coins slip through easily, but fingers, even of the 
long, Japanese variety, cannot follow, and the 
money must be tossed from a distance. Young 
women with button-hooks and shoe-horns attend 
to replace the shoes of foreign feminines. Bud- 
dhist and Shinto keep their abodes apart, pre- 
served with a near approach to their ancient 
splendor. 

These two divide the interest of the pilgrim 
and the traveler. They differ little in archi- 
tecture or arrangement, and perhaps to the 
worshipers who cast coppers before the altars 
for prayers each faith is equally obscure. But 
the great pavilions with lacquered red columns 
rise amid the cryptomeras in a silence broken 
only by the harsh "min-min" of the cicadas, 
who lead lofty lives on their limbs, and within are 

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beheld the treasures of rulers under whom the 
temples grew into being. A pagoda with crum- 
bling steps rises beside the portal of the Shinto 
shrine, and within the gates fountains splash 
and purl, while the visitors ascend the great 
stone stairways that stretch seemingly endlessly 
upward until the ultimate point of adoration is 
reached far up on the mountain. Here under a 
cope of bronze ornate in its magnificent simplic- 
ity sits the mortal part of leyasu, greatest of the 
Shoguns, who made Old Japan and left his mark 
upon the New. It stands inside a low balustrade 
of cut stone, the ground laid with water-washed 
pebbles, to break the force of the ever-falling 
rain, while high above and all about stand the 
cedars, their tops reaching into the clouds, 
which hover always about them, dampening 
their foliage and keeping it forever green. The 
tombs of the great in the Old World pantheons 
are but trivial resting places beside this of 
leyasu, who, like a second Charles the Fifth, 
laid aside his powers when he felt his work was 
done. 

A column of Korean cadets from the Tokyo 
military training school clattered up the long 

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stone stair and listened dully while the Japanese 
captain — perhaps — told them that here was laid 
the beginning of their captivity! 

The Prince was coming to his ancient castle in 
Nikko. The street of shops which makes the 
town took on a new air of dignity and solemnity. 
As the sun rose high toward noon the women 
tied the fiery flag of Japan to slender bamboo 
staffs and set them out at an angle from the 
corner walls. So hundreds of red suns fluttered 
along the way, the honorable banners paying 
respect to royalty. At the railroad station the 
school-children were drawn up in double lines, 
the boys on one side of the street and the 
girls on the other, each dressed uniformly ac- 
cording to sex. The girls wore skirts of purplish 
hue and waists as nearly white as a Japanese 
color scheme will permit. The boys had 
military caps on their close-cropped heads. They 
stood a long time patiently. The girls swayed 
and giggled, and a few sat on their heels to rest, 
but the boys stood firm and still. They were 
human boys just the same, with merry eyes and 
healthy brown faces, but they knew they were 
part of an occasion. Villagers of the humblest 



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sort gathered in a little group at the turn in the 
road. Two policemen kept them in check and 
warned one ill-favored old Etah woman away. 
They were kind-mannered and low-spoken and 
showed no loss of temper when the line broke, as 
it often did. Lumber-laden pack-horses were 
halted so as not to obstruct the narrow way. 
At last the train came, and with it the Prince. 
A procession of rickshaws moved rapidly between 
the lines. The little girls and boys ducked their 
heads low and never lifted eyes until the august 
personage passed, preceded by a stern general 
officer and followed by grave men in brown 
robes and golden collars, garbed like the coun- 
cilors of Old Japan. And what of the august 
personage ? He was a little boy in blue with a 
military cap, his brown face set and expression- 
less and his eyes looking nowhere, a sacred mite 
immolated to an idea! 

The hours at Nikko are struck upon a temple 
bell. It gives out such tone in sweet sonorous- 
ness that one awaits with eagerness for time to 
make its notations. The single stroke of one 
rings and reverberates across the valley like the 
song of a soul bursting from the bronze, but 

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when twelve is counted it seems as if the air was 
full, not of music, but of some vast threnody of 
vibration fit to make the mountains bow and set 
the wide world sighing. 



While woman is properly subjugated in Japan, 
the joy with which the male and married Japan- 
ese takes to the Geisha girls inspires the sus- 
picion that the domestic laws and customs have 
reduced Madam to insipidity. She is sweetly 
obedient in everything. Her husband is her 
lord and master to a verity. Miss Geisha is 
summoned to every "stag" party and usually 
to luncheons, even when held in the home, where 
Madam sits decorously in the background and 
the girls entertain the gentlemen. This enter- 
tainment is not limited to songs and the tum-tum 
of the shamisen or the slow, swaying dances, but 
between the acts she sits with the guests proffer- 
ing wines and viands and chatters gaily for Ja- 
pan. What is there considered wild liberty of 
conversation would not even be "smart" talk in 
New York. The tea-house waitresses are not 
the true Geisha. The latter are professionals 
of standing, and popular ones earn large sums 
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and are kept constantly employed. The mid- 
day luncheon or evening feast alike command 
her services, and the training for the profession 
is as long and arduous as that attending the 
education of a ballet-dancer in France or Italy. 
Little girls of seven selected for the part are 
trained, until atfourteen or so they are eligible for 
a pubhc career. The niceties of deportment are 
critically considered, and it is no easy task to win 
favor and popularity. 

The Japanese lady is one to the manner born. 
Her features are delicate and aquiline. Her 
nose is almost Grecian and her hands are mar- 
vels of slenderness and grace. The fingers are 
long, much longer than the feminine digits of the 
West, and incomparable in shape and delicacy. 
The round, bright faces and pudgy noses of the 
peasant and working-woman bear little sugges- 
tion of sisterhood with the grave and graceful 
ladies of the high households. 

One of the ancient privileges of the Japanese 
women at Nagasaki is the right to coal the liners. 
This work is done exclusively by the delicate 
sex, though the men do the shoveling. The 
fuel is carried in thirty-pound baskets, and in 

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this spoonful fashion twenty-five hundred tons 
have been stowed in eight hours. 

Madam Chrysantheme is here and Madam 
Butterfly! The adventurer from afar must have 
his will and his way if hearts are broken and 
little ladies made the sport of shame! 

Lecky long ago demonstrated that there was 
no relation whatever between a nation's morals 
and its progress. The Eastern idea of moral re- 
lations is different from that of the West, but the 
morals are about the same. Men are men and 
women women the world over. But in one point 
the Western world might take a lesson from the 
East. The woman who has borne a child out of 
wedlock is not sent forth to lead a life of shame 
as the only alternative, except suicide, but in- 
stead is cared for, and the child becomes the 
father's in name and rights. The Western 
theory that degradation must be the punish- 
ment of the mother for her sin as a warning to 
others, and follow the unwitting offspring 
through existence, does not prevail. When 
it is considered that Life is immortal in this 
world, whatever may happen to the Soul, and 
insists in preserving itself, the Eastern atti- 

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tude seems just and kind, and the Western 
horrible. 

"I hear they are very immoral," said the 
Englishman, en route to visit the Japanese. 
b)0 are we! 

"So we are," he assented, as if a Hghi had 
dawned. 

And this is about all the comparative comment 
that is needed. 

Japan alone has managed to adorn progress 
with simplicity, but social life and display will 
come rapidly now that the ladies are beginning 
to have something to say about it. It has been a 
long step from two swords to the claw-hammer, 
but it has been taken. Peace hath her victories 
no less dreadful than those of war! 

Much of the reputed inscrutabiUty of the East 
can be fairly credited to the fact that most ob- 
servers are looking for more than there is to 
find. 

Food is "chow" in the East, luncheon is "tif- 
fin," and an I. O. U. is a "chit." China and 
India make these additions to miscellaneous 
nomenclature. The "chit" is in lively use in 
the coast cities, where everything is charged, and 

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constitutes one of the easiest of all known roads 
to insolvency. 

"Squeeze" is colloquial for "graft" in the 
foreign-touched sections. It seems to be Ameri- 
can for the quiet but irresistible Chinese system 
for enforcing "rake-offs" which has spread itself 
widely over the Oriental world — and can be 
found elsewhere. 

"British subject" and "American citizen" 
are the ways the two great English-speaking 
tribes are designated in the East. Somehow the 
latter has the better sound. The success of the 
Englishman in the East, if his forlorn exile can be 
so described, baffles the observer. It can only 
be credited in the major part to a certain dull, 
unthinking persistence. There he is and there 
he stays. His concern for his personal comfort 
far exceeds his interest in business or his sur- 
roundings. His bath, his bacon and eggs, his 
afternoon tea, his whisky and soda and his 
dinner-coat must follow him even to the wilds 
of Papua. He sits in dignified forlornness, 
following out his delightful regimen of bath, 
drink, and dress, and lets the "niggers" work, 
which, strangely enough, and after a fashion, 

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they do. If he has any feeling it is one of dim 
amazement that he should come to such a coun- 
try, but this produces no manifest emotion. 
Like the Long Island farmer, he "sets and 
thinks" some of the time, and for the rest "just 
sets." Beside the alert, forceful American he 
seems a pitiful object, but the former wears him- 
self out against obstacles, while the latter wears 
out the obstacles! 

The characteristic popular tales of France and 
Italy involve the chase of women. The motif 
in the old Irish stories collected by Lady Augusta 
Gregory is treachery. The English and Ger- 
man traditions are of hearty and human deeds. 
The Arabian and Indian fancies are of dazzling 
houris, jewels, and jinn. The Chinese popular 
yarns involve rough jesting and laughs at the 
stumbles of the luckless. But the great Japanese 
narratives are those dealing with revenge, bold, 
spirited and open vengeance, taken without fear 
of consequence, and often voluntarily expiating 
with self-slaying the satisfactory conclusion of 
the pursuit. 

If the meek are to inherit the earth the China- 
men will get it. The Japanese is not meek even 
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in his natural rural state, while the Americanized 
versions are prim, precise, and positive, firm in 
opinion and unyielding in pride. Captain Bur- 
ton has observed that the religion of Mohammed 
upholds the dignity of man. So does Shintoism, 
or, better said, Bushido, the Spirit of Japan. 
Pride of race, pride of ancestry, hatred of the 
ignoble, these are individual traits that place the 
Japanese among the stiff-necked citizens of the 
world. 

Japan is "East," but one travels always west 
to get there. America is "West," but one travels 
always east to return. 

Japanese telegrams are sent on white paper 
and received on red. The receiving sheet folds 
up and becomes its own envelope. 

The stone wall, a common source of landscape 
disfigurement in America, is an adornment in 
Japan. Rough boulders are not used nor is any 
cement or mortar employed in retaining em- 
bankments. Instead, the stone, split into regu- 
lar sizes of lozenge shape, is laid at an angle, each 
unit binding another on the flat-arch princi- 
ple. Strength and symmetry are inexpensively 
attained. The great walls that guard the moats 
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around the royal palace in Tokyo are magnifi- 
cent specimens of the art, and stand secure amid 
the centuries that have passed since leyasu's 
servitors put them into place. 

Although the British brought their beloved 
cricket with them to Japan half a century ago 
and have played innumerable matches on the 
green at Yokohama, it remained for the Ameri- 
can game of baseball to capture the Nipponese. 
Desperate small boys now seize upon level 
vacant spots, preferably the temple grounds, and 
pitch, bat, and run bases with innate intensity. 
All boys in Japan wear the military cap, but the 
rest of the costume varies from waist and knick- 
erbockers to the single flowing garment and 
almost the "altogether." The nines therefore 
show all grades of clothing or the lack of it. It 
looks rather odd to see lads scudding for a base 
with bare legs and waving skirts. The pitching 
observed was pretty good, the batting bad, with 
a tendency to "bunt" the ball, but all hands 
were adept at base-stealing. Centuries of 
skirts, clogs, and sandals have made the race 
poor runners. The ball-players ran barefooted 
but awkwardly. Both Keio University and 
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Waseila, at lokvo. maintain teams wliicli some- 
times journey to Hawaii and the Paeific coast 
.iiul make a good sliowing. The game is catch- 
ing on in Chma, wlieie tliero ate some nines 
worth watclung. Tliese oeeasionalh^ phi\' the 
la|\uiese, and fVequentlv match up with plavers 
tVoin flu- foreign ships, especially the American 
men-ot-war. 



\\ restlers are made, not born, in Japan. The 
boy selected to become an abnormality of size 
and strength is fattened on beef and beer until 
he grows to about three times the weight of 
the average Japanese, just as geese are stuffed in 
Strasburg. C^ne specimen riding in a trolle\' 
car suggested a visitor from Brobdingnag com- 
pared \N ith his fellow - travelers. Naturally 
wrestling is professional, and consists larc.el\" 
o( heaving and hauling. There is not much 
chance for sleight-of-hand work where the prin- 
cipals are good men weighing more than tAvo 
hundred and fifty pounds. 

The .\iuerican Consulate in ^ okohama has 
occupied the same structure tor a quarter of a 
cenrun or so. It is a Nery commodious, com- 
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fortable building in a pleasant plot of grass, and 
the flag flies higher from the staff than any other 
in Yokohama. The foreign business quarter of 
the town where the 2,287 foreigners carry on 
their trade is called the Bund, held under a 
perpetual lease, which the Japanese have tried 
hard to break, because it holds the sea-front and 
the best values in the community, blanketing the 
great city behind it. The foreigners live on the 
Bluff", where church spires rise nobly to the sky 
and the houses look like home. 

Japan has a close season for whales. There 
are some twenty-five steam whalers in com- 
mission, and unless checked in their operations 
the great mammals would soon disappear from 
the waters. Whale meat is an important item 
of food, quite aside from the value of the oil and 
bone. Salted whale meat tastes like corned 
beef with melted butter poured over it. 

In the Shinto Temple at Miyajima a young 
dapple-gray horse paws and whimpers fretfully. 
He is a prisoner for life unless, when, as the 
Shinto sect believe, after night falls the god- 
desses Itsukushima-hime-no-mikoto, Tagori- 
hime-no-mikoto, and Takitsu-hime-no-mikoto 
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mount him and ride across the sky. Long ago 
Shigemori, son of Taira-mo-Kiyomori, presented 
a steed to the temple for their use, and the pious 
Shintos have never since allowed the stall to be- 
come empty. The dapple as he grows old turns 
white, and this is attributed to the taste of the 
riders, who are supposed to prefer it, but are 
allowed the pleasure of altering the shade in- 
stead of starting in with a white animal in the 
first place. Visitors can buy a spoonful of grain 
for half a cent and feed the captive. Some do, 
and he whinnies gratefully. 

AH japan travels. The second and third 
class cars are crowded and the highroads ex- 
hibit many walking parties journeying from 
village to village for pleasure and exploration. 
The Japanese inns and tea-houses are plentiful 
and well patronized. The pilgrimage to Fuji is 
the most popular. From old times it has been a 
custom in the village to accumulate a travel fund 
by common contribution which each year sends 
a number of the elders or lucky ones on a jour- 
ney to the sacred places and beauty spots. 

Although the government owns the railroads, 
it exacts a tax on tickets. The passenger has his 
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choice of first, second, and third class, but must 
pay extra fare on through trains, while all are 
taxed. Taxes are offensive to the best of us, 
and a tax on railway tickets tends to hinder 
traffic. It seems absurd, when the entire revenue 
goes to one source and the tax could be deftly 
hidden in the price of the ticket. 

Plenty of army and naval officers in uniform 
ride in the trains. But, curiously, they never 
salute or address one another. They enter, leave, 
and pass by without a sign of recognition or any 
suggestion that they are in the same service. 

The Mayor of Yokohama gets a salary of 
^6,000 a year. This is the same wage as that 
received by General the Prince Katsura, Prime 
Minister of the nation. It is the best-paid civic 
job in Japan. 

"This toy garden is not intended as a recep- 
tacle for cigar ashes" is a sign on a lovely minia- 
ture landscape in the foyer of the Fujiya Hotel at 
Miyanoshita. Foreigners are the chief patrons. 



Japan is a land of pageants. Just as the glass 
particles in the kaleidoscope shape themselves 
into a pattern the traffic of the streets turns into 
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parades before the foreign eye. Family parties 
fill rows of rickshaws, and with father, dignified 
and stern, riding ahead, turn into a striking dress 
review as mother and the girls and the maids 
and little ones follow in many colored silks and 
crepes. Passing soldiers drop into double- 
column formation in the narrow streets, their 
yellowish khaki topped with red, and the pass- 
ing throng in the roadway or sidewalk is forever 
a shifting show of smiles and color. Even the 
coolies tugging at a load make small processions, 
each with his trade-sign broadly emblazoned in 
blue and white or black and white on his back. 
Uniforms prevail among the workers of every 
grade, and this helps to complete the picture. Ad- 
vertising signs led by a sounding drum or pipes 
and bugles flutter as might the banners of an 
army in the Samurai days. The bullocks and 
ponies moving the two-wheeled carts suggest 
a farm-yard on the march. 

Neat signs in English adorn Japanese railway 
stations detailing the points of interest in the 
vicinity, together with their distances from the 
depots. 

One American institution is hugely visible all 
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over Japan: big brown tanks at the stations 
labeled, "Standard Oil Company of New 
York, Tiger Brand." Perhaps "Tiger" is used 
to scare the timid native and British rivals. 
Mr. Rockefeller is much better represented than 
the government of the United States in the trad- 
ing districts of the East. 

The Japanese lobster has no claws and is 
much smaller than its American prototype. He 
shows up equally well though in cutlets or a la 
Newburg. 

The Japanese desire not to offend sometimes 
produces queer results. During the war a con- 
valescent station was established at Hakone, and 
the soldiers were quartered alike on foreign and 
native residents. The Yokohama summer col- 
ony had its quota. One Boston lady, who had 
spent several seasons at the resort, by dint of 
scolding and the polite aid of the local policeman 
had succeeded in stopping public bathing on the 
beach before her cottage. But one day she was 
horrified to see a soldier splashing at the edge of 
the lawn. She sent her old serving-woman to 
tell the man he must come out of the water and 
put on his clothes or he would be arrested. In 

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a few minutes she looked up from her sewing to 
see Mr. Private before her, quite unclad, bowing 
and smiling and evidently trying to thank her 
for something. She succeeded in "shooing" 
him away and summoned the woman. "What 
did you tell that man .?" she demanded. " Please, 
mistress," was the reply, "I didn't want to hurt 
his feelings by telling him he would be arrested, 
so I just told him you advised him that he would 
be sunstruck if he did not come out of the water 
and dress. He was thanking you for your kind 
thoughtfulness." 

Kyoto has a ship railway that tunnels through 
a mountain by which the sampans are con- 
veyed from the city canals to Lake Biwa, far 
up in the highlands, the largest body of fresh 
water in Japan. Like processions of great 
beetles the boats creep up and down the incline, 
appearing and vanishing by turn in the tunnel. 
In this way an economical transportation service 
is provided for a wide commerce. Not even op- 
portunities are wasted in this close-worked land. 

Night comes quickly in Japan. The sun 
loses no time in bidding the earth adieu. It 
sets not in glory but with art, sinking softly out 
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of view in trim of pink and silver, and the twi- 
light is merely mom-jntary. The cities blaze in 
spots with electric signs, and electric lights in 
stores and along thoroughfares are common, but 
in the households the paper lantern serves. 
Most of the shop folks close their shutters early, 
sliding the panels together and completely 
barring the lower floors. This is the law. No 
matter how hot the night the house is en- 
tirely closed in. This produces a shortage of 
air and a minimum of ventilation, except where 
lattices prevail, which is the case occasionally. 
The people cluster together under the lights in 
cheery groups, with here and there a studious 
fellow squatting apart poring over a book. Out- 
side of the theaters, which do not amuse for- 
eigners, and the shopping streets there is little 
to entertain after dark, except to watch the 
bobbing lanterns of the rickshaw men as they 
twinkle in and out of the little lanes called 
streets into the wider avenues, or to wander 
amid the crowds of the Asakusa. 

The ornamental plant called "elephant-ears" 
in America is cultivated as a vegetable and pro- 
duces the edible root called taro. 
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Youth and vigor are the enviable things with 
us. Age and dignity are the high desires in the 
East. To turn from toil to contemplation and 
from common contact to the reserve of years is 
the wished-for outcome of Japanese life. Men 
hasten to become old. This perhaps explains 
the strange custom that reckons the child one 
year of age when born and makes it two when 
the new calendar opens, even if the birth was on 
the last day of December. Life is a little thing 
at best! Hurry it through! 

Western nations endeavor to enforce morals, 
public order, and education by law. In Japan 
example is relied on to do more for these ends 
than law. Let us behave, is the central thought, 
not let us make others behave! 

Japan relies much on its homogeneity, and is 
inclined to think the United States weak be- 
cause of its mixed races, failing to understand 
that it is a mixture of the boldest and most ad- 
venturous of all lands now coined into a nation 
too strong to be sensitive and utterly unafraid. 
A curious idea prevalent among the best minds in 
Tokyo was that the negro is America's na- 
tional menace, not knowing that he is merely a 
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poorly employed utility who ceases to be a 
problem as fast as he learns to work, and will! 



The hen, which is the mainstay of Europe, 
America, and China, is a newcomer in Japan, 
which imports cargoes of eggs from the celestial 
chicken-yards. Fancy fowl are cultivated by 
the government, which is trying to inoculate its 
people with the hen fever. The latest figures 
indicate 19,000,000 fowls, distributed among 
2,925,400 farming families out of 5,490,500 in 
the empire, or a little better than six to a flock. 
Domestic fowls are seldom seen. The duck, 
China's favorite bird, is a rarity. The Chinese 
have a simple method of incubating eggs. A 
layer of chaff is laid in a long, deep trough. On 
this a layer of eggs rests. This arrangement 
alternates until the trough is full. Then the 
chaff is lightly moistened, which starts a fer- 
mentation. The resulting heat warms the eggs 
and keeps them warm until hatched, when the 
chicks or ducklings wriggle up through the soft 
covering to the light of day and begin to take 
care of themselves. Chinese rivers are white 
with flocks of ducks, each guarded by a herder in 
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a sampan. When it is time to go to roost the 
caretaker calls his flocks, and the birds paddle 
rapidly to the boat and struggle to get aboard. 
The last duck over the side is invariably beaten 
v^'ith a stick "to encourage the others," as M. de 
Voltaire once said of another occasion. 

Hotel and steamship bills of fare in the East 
carry a number against each item. This is to 
make it easy in dealing with the waiters, who can 
comprehend numbers better than they can the 
average steward's French as pronounced by the 
usual wayfarer. It was a little surprising to 
have a Japanese waiter at the Grand Hotel in 
Yokohama say, "I prefer it to have you give me 
the names, not the numbers." 

Beautiful as it greets the eye, Japan is a land 
of peril to its inhabitants. The denuded moun- 
tains pour down their torrents in vast floods and 
take vengeance upon the fertile robber-plains. 
Even the earth is not steady, but quivers and 
trembles a thousand times a year as the uneasy 
elements battle in the depths below. In 
Yokohama the instruments record an average of 
about three tremors a day. Not all are felt by 
the public at large. The earthquake is some- 
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thing no one gets used to. Wise foreign resi- 
dents provide themselves with a heavy dressing- 
gown and thick bed-slippers for immediate exit 
out of doors when the bedsteads begin to shiver. 
The Japanese houses are without plaster ceilings, 
but have tile roofs set in mud on a thin sheathing. 
The mud dries out, and commonly in a shake the 
roof slides off. The custom of binding the tiles 
has not yet arrived from across the sea. In the 
foreign-built house the chimneys are apt to 
disintegrate. They do not always fall, but 
slew around in sections, perilously shattered and 
apparently ready to drop at a breath. With 
customary optimism, the earthquake is regarded 
as a weather-maker. A shake is expected to 
produce a change. 

One thing comes readily to the mind in Japan. 
The people are tired of tutelage and of being 
"interpreted" and "understood." They are 
plain folk like most of us, and seek direct contact 
without the help of middlemen, whether they be 
commission merchants, missionaries, consuls, or 
ambassadors. They conceal their annoyance, 
but are no less annoyed at an insistence of assist- 
ance where they feel it is no longer needed. 

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When the way was dark it was another thing. 
They welcomed help as it came, good or bad; 
any one who could unlock the mysteries of the 
West. This is all over now. There are no 
more mysteries. They are still polite to such 
of their old teachers as survive, but they want 
no more. 

While the name of Commodore Perry is fore- 
most in the opening of Japan, the American 
whose memory is really revered is Townsend 
Harris, the first minister to the Shogun's court. 
He is regarded as the real uplifter, who opened 
minds as well as harbors. 

Policemen are plentiful but not ostentatious 
in japan. They are mostly firm-looking little 
men in white, wearing a short sword and military 
cap. Each post seems to have a sentry-house, 
with telephone, desk, and chairs, and a hot spot 
to heat the tea. The wages are fifteen yen a 
month, or seven dollars and a half of our money, 
a somewhat puny compensation when contrasted 
with the majestic sum awarded a New York 
patrolman. The police are under government, 
not municipal control, and keep nearly honest, 
though Tokyo has its police scandals, oppressive 
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raids, and hints of blackmail, just like the Amer- 
ican metropolis. The newspapers hold the 
guardians of the peace in about the same regard 
in Tokyo as in New York. No one loves a 
policeman or a schoolmaster anywhere in the 
world. The letter carriers get six dollars a 
month and the honor of serving their adored 
government. 

Girls appear here and there in business em- 
ployment. "Central" is all smiles and kimono 
and takes her time. The ticket sellers in the 
big railway stations are dignified damsels, and 
feminine bank helpers handle minor affairs in 
the Specie Bank of Yokohama. 



Newspapers are numerous in Japan, and some 
of them are prosperous. In Tokyo there are 
about twenty vernacular dailies, and two printed 
in the English tongue. The Times, edited by M. 
Zumoto and controlled by Japanese, and The Ad- 
vertiser, ably conducted by an American, Mr. B. 
Wilfred Fleisher. The Kokumin (The Nation) 
is the mostdignified and perhaps the bestwritten, 
edited by Mr. I. Tokutomi, easily the first of 
Japanese journalists. It is the representative 
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of the Katsura government. The Jiji, Hochi, 
and Asahi lead in news energy and enterprise, 
with the Miyako close in popularity, the latter 
being known as a "woman's paper" and having 
a wide circulation, though its news is hardly of 
the Sunday-school variety, having much to do 
with Geishas and other unattached females. 

In their eagerness to secure circulation many 
of the Tokyo dailies distribute free copies, 
which makes their business possibilities rather 
vague. It is probable that the Asahi and Maini- 
chi, of Osaka, are the most prosperous journals 
in the country, covering as they do three cities, 
Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe, giving a population as 
great as Tokyo's within an hour's radius, and 
affording much better industrial conditions. 

Nagasaki supports an English daily, the 
Press, and Kobe the Herald and Chronicle, the 
latter edited with singular ability by Mr. Robert 
Young, a writer who would earn distinction any- 
where. Yokohama has three English dailies, 
the Herald, Gazette, and Mail. Morning edi- 
tions are issued six days in the week, excluding 
Monday. The Japan Deutscher Post is a Yoko- 
hama weekly. 

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All told there are about eighteen hundred 
Japanese daily, weekly, and monthly publica- 
tions, with some circulations as high as two 
hundred and eighty thousand a day. 

While liberty of the press is hampered by the 
rather wide ruling that nothing must be pub- 
lished that will tend to disturb tranquillity or 
arouse antagonistic thought, the editors are bold 
and vigorous. Some of the papers published 
in foreign tongues indulge in criticisms quite as 
caustic as anything to be found in, say, the New 
York Evenina Post. During the annexation of 
Korea, General Terauchi, the Viceroy, excluded 
various Tokyo publications from his domain. 
The Tokyo editors made remarks about his 
programme altogether undeterred by conse- 
quences. Proofs are not submitted for cen- 
sorship, but mail editions are read and the 
city only gets the benefit of excisions — if the 
editor feels like accepting suggestions; if he 
doesn't the issue for the day is apt to be con- 
fiscated. 

At least three Tokyo dailies have the demo- 
cratic mind of Count Okuma behind them, and 
his is a voice not to be stilled. 



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Examples of native newspaper criticism of 
those in authority are frequent and open, and 
the editors seem ordinarily quite unawed by the 
possibility of prosecution or suppression. The 
Hochi in attacking the Prime Minister not long 
ago gives a good sample of the brand : 

"The cabinet has recently been show^ing very 
adroit ingenuity in manoeuvering with the peo- 
ple; and consequently even Marquis Katsura's 
poHtical antagonists, owing to lack of judgment, 
are frequently cajoled into taking up the offi- 
cial cause and forgetting their original startling 
views. There is an old Chinese story which says 
that a certain prince well up in monkey-taming, 
with a view to economizing in the food con- 
sumed by his monkeys declared that he would 
give them only three bowls of food in the morn- 
ing and four bowls in the evening. This pro- 
posal the monkeys angrily rejected. Thereupon 
the prince promised four bowls in the morning 
and three in the evening, at which the creatures 
expressed the highest satisfaction. Premier 
Katsura is treating the Japanese people like the 
ancient Chinese sage did his apes." 

A defect in Japanese journalism is the ten- 

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dency of papers to attack one another and to 
retail gossip quite below good news standards; 
but these things are fast correcting themselves as 
the editors find that language can be better em- 
ployed, and news-gathering becomes more sys- 
tematic. 

News from the United States is scarce in the 
English papers, and that from England pays an 
overwhelming amount of attention to the results 
of cricket matches and Unionist politics. The 
local matter is excellent, informative, and well 
written. The papers are "set up" by Japanese 
compositors who do not understand English, but 
have "learned the case" and know the charac- 
ters, but have no knowledge of the meaning of 
their work. The editorials show their writers 
feel they carry the burden of the Eastern Ques- 
tion, whatever that portentous and unsolvable 
query is. 

Despite the prevailing gravity, Japan sup- 
ports two comic papers, the Tokyo Puck and 
the Osaka Puck, each under a different manage- 
ment, but much the same in looks and humor. 
The pictures are in color and both explain their 
jokes in Japanesed English that does not reduce 
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their merit. In 1910 women's suffrage and 
Theodore Roosevelt suppHed the preponderating 
topics for jests and cartoons, both imported! 
The wits of the two Pucks are very impudent, 
and agin' the government and its overload of 
war taxes. They are anti-jingo. Both prosper. 



Fire protection, though greatly needed, is 
poorly afforded in the Japanese cities. The 
fire companies in Yokohama are housed in little 
sheds open to the street, where, in addition to 
the khaki-clad platoon lolling about, is to be 
found a miniature steam fire-engine, English 
built, and rigged with wooden handles so it can 
be pulled by men. It is built to accommodate 
narrow streets and little people, but unhappily 
there is nothing miniature about a fire, and, in the 
event of a conflagration, the proportions are soon 
lost. The fragile houses burn like rosin, and 
about the only way to stop a blaze is to pull down 
enough buildings to bar its progress to further 
food. The fire-alarm system is the old one of 
an upright ladder bearing a bell, which, pounded 
with a hammer, sounds the alarm. Usually 
this leaves the location of the fire somewhat 
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vague, and the patient pompiers wait until it 
is big enough for them to see. Some of the 
ladders have watchers perched upon them, but 
usually the alarm is left to chance. 

They do not sing the "Ninety and Nine" in 
the East. No one worries about the one-hun- 
dredth lamb. They do not have to. It is 
taught to come into the folJ on time and not to 
worry the shepherd. No one goes hunting 
around in the dark and the wet for the strayling. 
Nor ha.s the East learned yet that it was created 
in six days and that the seventh was set aside for 
repose. Government offices close and the banks 
take a holiday, as do the foreign merchants, but 
the every-day Japan keeps on in its every-day 
routine, though with some slackening of effort. 
Most shopkeepers display their wares and the 
workmen toil their long and unceasing hours. 

Japanese imitativeness, of which so much is 
heard, usually comes closer to the trade-mark 
than the article. Its "something just as good" 
usually leaves out the essential ingredient or in- 
volves some defect in process. Foreign manufac- 
turers of proprietary articles complain liberally 
of the same sort of counterfeiting that pre- 

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vails in about every drug-store or grocery in the 
United States. So moral reprobation can read- 
ily begin at home, where "substitution" is so 
freely practised. In making machinery the 
Japanese have a similar difficulty in arriving at 
the real thing. Some essential to perfect work- 
ing is either overlooked or left out in the desire 
to save or from sheer inability to discover it. 
Japanese visitors to America always impress 
their hosts with the closeness of their inquiries 
and by taking multitudinous notes. But to go 
home and disentangle the mass of information, 
not always clearly comprehended, is quite an- 
other matter. There is plenty of testimony to 
prove Japanese mechanical ineffectiveness. In 
the cotton-mills it is difficult to have the plant 
kept in good order or to produce with foreign 
rapidity. The cheap labor is an offset to a de- 
gree — but only an offset. 

Government efficiency, away from industrial 
lines, and beyond the army and the navy, shows 
itself in the marvelous sanitation enforced. 
The bubonic plague has been repelled, and 
cholera, the ancient enemy of the East, that once 
swept away its thousands, is kept down. Child 
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life is trebly safer than of old. Many diseases, 
as well as other evils, that were unknown until 
the ports were opened still work havoc despite 
the great development in sanitary skill. The 
medical school at Tokyo rivals the best institu- 
tions of the West. Scientific germ-killing and eye 
treatment are Japanese specialties. 

The highest form of bliss in the matter of 
value received is to earn money in America and 
spend it in Japan — but for the intervening 
custom-houses. After emptying a New York 
pocket-book at Nippon values the bill of a San 
Francisco hackman for hauling two persons from 
the dock to the hotel came as a cruel shock. It 
would have paid a rickshaw man's wages for three 
ten-hour days in Tokyo. Time, twenty minutes ! 

Bears are found on the Northern Island of 
Yezo, where the aboriginal Ainus hunt them. 
The heart is eaten as a delicacy. Bear hams, 
smoked and cured like pork, are esteemed by 
epicures. There are some monkeys around 
Nikko, and yellow wildcats are hunted in the 
hills. Otherwise the gentle spotted deer are 
the only fauna of size. 

Universal politeness and the perpetual bowing 

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can be credited back to the lordly two-sword 
men who swaggered for centuries throughout 
Japan and made the common folk humble. So 
the bow, once a sign of submission, has become 
a national characteristic, like the celestial pigtail, 
that had its origin in the coercion of the Manchu 
conquerors of China. Both smile and bow are 
automatic. There is lamentation that polite- 
ness is dying out, which is probably true. Haste 
and independence are enemies of good manners, 
and these are having a manifest influence in 
seaport Japan. 

In the district called Tosa, on Shikoku, an 
island off Kobe in the Inland Sea, is hatched a 
rooster that must once have crossed breed with 
a bird-of-paradise. It runs to tail - feathers. 
The Japanese pen them in narrow cages with a 
roosting-bar near the top, on which the bird 
poses sideways, unable to do anything but ex- 
hibit his marvelous plumes, which hang in some 
cases six to eight feet in beautiful fronds of 
feather. When the bird is let out for an airing 
his plumage must be carefully done up. 



Japan is poor in capital and natural resources, 

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but rich in patriotism and unity of purpose. By 
some singular instinct of solidarity the popular 
mind comes readily to a sound conclusion, with 
. the result that anything once agreed upon be- 
comes an established fact so far as human 
beings can accomplish it. That parties will 
arise with the extension of the franchise and 
the development of industries on Western lines 
is probable, but it is to be doubted even then 
if the singleness of view where the national 
welfare is concerned will ever become shattered. 
Poverty is pretty equal in Japan, wealth rare. 
But it is self-respecting, honorable poverty, 
without squalor or envy of the fortunate. The 
poor of Japan are hard to detect by the con- 
trasts prevailing elsewhere. People are clean; 
the simple costumes create a similarity of ap- 
pearance in dress. There are no rags or tatters. 
The houses are much alike, the cooking utensils 
and the charcoal hearth are the same for all. 
So are the food staples and the pine chop-sticks 
that convey them to the palate. 

The great problem in the United States is how 
to control wealth. The puzzle in Japan is how 
to create it. Having established her political 
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position, her statesmen are now devoting them- 
selves to her financial upbuilding. How to do 
this in a land so Hmited in natural resources, alien 
in habit and thought to the competing world, is a 
task to tremble before. Japan has elected to be 
Western, but starts with an economic handicap 
most difficult to overcome. 

The ready-made methods of the subsidy and 
government ownership simply create an endless 
chain along which effort is drawn to return to the 
spot it started from, with no perceptible incre- 
ment that can reassert itself in new creations of 
energy and expansion, if it does not really result 
in impoverishment, as in the case of the steam- 
ship lines trading to Europe and America, which 
would show a heavy loss to their stockholders 
but for the subsidies. The items of loss and 
dividend are both covered out of the tax levy, 
and therefore make the people particeps in this 
large outgo in excess of the legitimate earning 
capacity of the ships. In effect they are forci- 
bly made to repair a loss with which they have 
nothing to do and their tax payings go into the 
pockets of a few. To keep the money at home, 
it is decreed that no foreigner may hold stock in a 
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subsidized concern. This sends the dividends 
into Japanese pockets, but the loss over and 
above them cannot all be turned into a profit at 
home, because the ships have heavy charges 
against them at foreign ports which cannot be 
evaded, and so the artificiality fails to accom- 
plish its complete end. Moreover, many of 
them still employ European or American navi- 
gators, whose wages do not get to Japan. 

Now the further artificiality of a protective 
tariff is piled on top of subsidies and war taxes. 
Hitherto the Japanese tariff, except that which 
protects government monopolies, has been one 
for revenue. It is common testimony that the 
cost of living has doubled since 1894. Japan 
has been handicapped, in the judgment of her 
statesmen, by an impossible task of paying for 
her newly acquired Western needs out of a wage- 
earning capacity of about one-tenth of that of the 
people from whom she buys her foreign-made 
wares. To overcome this, then, a tariff becomes 
a necessity. It will be observed that this is an 
exact reversal, like all things Eastern, of our own 
protective theory. Here we ostensibly raise our 
tariff wall to keep out the cheap products of 

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other lands; in Japan the motive is to keep the 
country from further impoverishing itself by 
buying high-priced articles from abroad with the 
weak wages and small productive power of the 
hand-workman to pay for the exchange. 

Japan is old and wise and was never yet a 
prodigal. If wealth can be created without 
privilege, if profits can be fairly distributed with- 
out becoming ineffective as needed industrial 
factors, the nation is in a position to find out. 
The rest of the world has failed. 

The scope of education is mainly patri- 
otic. Reverence for the government, for na- 
tional honor, and high political self-respect are 
the examplars; this in Japan, where exactness of 
mind on these questions prevails to an extent 
quite beyond the grasp of the citizen of the 
United States, whose reverence for government 
is in inverse ratio. The government is to him 
much or little, according to his needs; but in 
Japan it is the second sun about which the life of 
the nation revolves and in which lies its strength. 

Honor is not to be sneezed at, but it can easily 
be recalled that the gentlemen of the French 
court who drew their blades to meet a sneering 
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smile did not pay their debts and became a sore 
burden upon unhappy France, until the great 
revolution shook them off. The Japanese 
standard is no such thing as that, but it concen- 
trates government worship to the exclusion of 
much that might be well taught and practised. 
A nation in the main for its entire existence, 
military and agricultural, has much to discard 
and remodel before it competes with another 
civilization far less high-minded politically and 
perhaps less noble in thought, but efficient in- 
dustrially and financially to the last degree. 



Even education brings its burdens. The 
colleges at Tokyo and Kyoto are crushed with 
students. They crowd the higher institutions in 
hungry-minded thousands, creating a problem 
as they graduate. What are they all to do with 
their widened minds ? The small villages offer 
no field, except perhaps to the doctors. Pro- 
fessional men are little needed outside of the 
cities, and there the want is best supplied from 
the ranks of those educated abroad. Teaching 
is the poorest paid of all occupations. So 
"educated pauper" is already a term in vogue in 
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Japan. It is like sending a Carlisle-educated 
Sioux back to the tepee to return a college 
graduate to the village from whence he came to 
make a living with his brains. Already there is 
much despair and a constant turning to the 
government to provide employment for the 
oversupply of college-made talent. For the 
idea has spread widely in Japan that book-learn- 
ing is the magic by which men rise in the world. 
Indeed, the book-stalls are the most crowded of 
the shops, and at night through the opened 
screens one sees the diligent youth poring over 
the pages of text-books by the dim lantern-lights 
seeking in the printed page the door to material 
uplift that, alas, must be still, and for many years 
made only by unceasing toil and the sternest sort 
of economy. 

The greatest aggregation of wealth in Japan is 
in the hands of the Imperial Family, which 
owns 3,520,000 acres of land, and is largely inter- 
ested in banks and business corporations. The 
estimate of their total property is ^250,000,000. 
They do not tax Japan heavily otherwise. The 
civil list has stood at §1,500,000 for twenty years. 
While the Emperor holds a position above that 
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of any deity in the minds of the people, the 
Imperial Family is expected to come forward 
strongly when enterprise needs support or when 
financial affairs get in a bad way. Its bene- 
factions are large. 

After the Imperial Family, the Mitsui Family 
and the Iwazaki Family, both business cor- 
porations, are called strongest in the financial 
world, while Baron Shibusawa and Mr. Murai, 
once the Tobacco King of Japan, stand at the 
head of the list of individuals who can be called 
rich. Marshal Prince Yamagata is very wealthy, 
and Premier Katsura is well fixed. But there 
are many more millionaires in Greenwich, Con- 
necticut, than there are in all Japan. 

Benefits of the war with Russia are not visible 
in Japan. Aside from the pride of victory, it 
might almost be said to have brought nothing 
but disadvantage. A huge war debt is draining 
taxes into foreign coffers by way of interest. An 
entire division of the army is sitting on the 
uneasy lid in Manchuria. A Korean assassin 
took the life of Prince Ito, who was of more 
individual value to Japan than the whole Korean 
kingdom. Thousands of brave and active men 
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are in thoir graves, a saoritice to the god ot war. 
Russia paid no indeninity in money, and must 
eontinue to be watehed lest she again press 
through to the Paeitie. A gieat tleei imist he 
maintained to guard the httle ishmds tVoni the 
envv and animosit\' otthe worKl, while the wlioie 
nation is under a perpetual strain to uphold the 
prestige gained in the eonfliet — a prestige that 
eannot be ei>nverted into .in\ thing that will give 
more riee and better tare to the 40.000.000 out of 
her 50.000,000 people who ninst live from hand 
to mouth, feeding themselves onl\ h\ foieing 
two erops .1 \ear tioin the leluetant soil or 
snatehing rtsh and seaweed from the selHsh sea m 
a land where every grain of riee nnist be eouiued 
and tish and seaweed dried. 

riuis in fr\ ing to be modern and eoinpetitive 
\vithi>ut natural resources the burden placed 
upon the industrious inhabitants is very great. 
Poetry, cherry-blossoms, and chrysanthemums 
are at a sad discount in conflict with the nat- 
ural advantages and organized resources of the 
WestiMU world. That so much has been done is 
marvelous; that much more will be done is a 
natural expectancy; but the load is enormous 
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and the shoulclors iVw. For, afrcr all, the Japan 
of to-day is the creation of a score of minds who, 
actinjf together as did the great fathers of the 
American Repuhlic, have produced a reversal 
of relationships and govirnmeiit so radical as to 
excite the utmost amazement. 

Can this handful continue to carry the strain, 
solve hoth till' old and the new piohlems ? I ins 
is the question. I lahils and thoughts have hiin 
reversed so far as government and progress are 
concerned, and Ja|iaii is in the great compctilion. 
Can it hold what it has .'' J he answer is thai the 
man or nation that insists upon heing treated as 
an equal usually becomes one! 1 lere is a coun- 
try where the citi/en serves the state and the 
state serves the citizen, with a single eye to the 
common welfare. Men and things that get in 
the way do not live long! 

The small earning power of the people, while 
increased since the war in .some lines, is a factor 
of both advantage and disadvantage in com- 
petition with the rest of the nations. Cheap as 
Japanese labor is, Chinese labor is cheaper and 
more efficient, .so that a dangerous rival is 
always at hand in the home market; while in 
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military competition, say with the United States, 
the twenty-cent-a-day earning power of the 
Japanese is up against the three or four-dollar- 
a-day cost of the tools of war, purchased mainly 
abroad even now — a fifteen to twenty - time 
handicap. Limitless credit and unlimited means 
are therefore pitted in any thought-of struggle 
against a people of small physical and financial 
resource, strong in their patriotism and admi- 
rable in brain power. Aside from the unreason- 
ableness and senselessness of conflict, these fiscal 
facts are powerful and can be counted upon to 
cool the hottest blood and palliate a good deal of 
affront and imposition. 



Wonder is often expressed at the success of the 
United States in assimilating four million aliens 
in the last dozen years. Japan has taken on a 
far heavier cargo in sixteen years, composed of 
much more difficult and unresponsive material. 
The people who came to America did so to satis- 
fy ambition and to better their condition. Most 
of them brought energy and good-will with them. 
The case of Japan and her aliens is quite differ- 
ent. In the United States the newcomers took 
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care of themselves for the most part; the addi- 
tions to the population of Japan remain on their 
own ground, obdurate, rebeUious, or inane. 

The sole prize of Japan in the war with China 
was the tropic island of Formosa, much such a 
problem as our own Philippines. It is too hot 
for the temperate-loving Japanese, so but few go 
there. But the army polices the aborigines and 
keeps them close to their mountain fastnesses at 
great cost in blood and treasure, while on the 
plains or at the seaports three million Chinese, 
free from fear of head-hunters, thrive and fatten 
at the expense of their protectors ! 

Just as Formosa is too far south, so Saghalien, 
a spoil from Russia — which, by the way, was 
once all Japan's, now but half owned — is too far 
north. The people like neither heat nor cold, so 
the development of Saghalien has to be sub- 
sidized and makes small headway. 

In Manchuria the discovery has been made 
that as fast as the discipline and good sense of the 
Japanese military authorities have produced 
order and safety for property the harried Chinese 
have quickly come back to their own. Better 
farmers and harder workers than the Japanese 

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who have sought to settle with them, they keep 
the latter at a great industrial distance. The 
Chinaman is for his own pocket all the time, and 
only needs security to prosper. This the well- 
organized Japanese government gives him. 
Observers agree that the Chinese farms in 
Manchuria are magnificent examples of agricul- 
tural efficiency. The effect of this competition 
becomes plainer when it is learned that less than 
seventy-five thousand Japanese have gone to 
Manchuria and that nearly forty per cent, of 
these depend upon government enterprises for 
support. 

The treasure of Manchuria is its bean crop. 
This is enriching the province. It not only 
affords the fermented juice called soy, which is 
the universal sauce of the Orient, and forms the 
base of the Western Worcestershire, but the 
compressed cake is valuable as a food for domes- 
tic animals and as a substitute for superphos- 
phate in fertilizing. A spoonful of the fer- 
mented cake in liquid will hoist a hill of corn 
amazingly. An oil is also expressed fit for light, 
fuel, lubricating, or soap-making, and as an in- 
gredient in paints, varnishes, and printing inks. 
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Now comes Korea under an annexation move, 
with its twelve million people, dull and stupid 
for the most part and industrially supine. They 
must be educated, bestirred, and protected by 
their new owners. The burden will rest heavily 
on the already hard tried intellectual and politi- 
cal forces of Japan. Such talent as there is in 
Korea is rebellious and sure to be resentful, for a 
time at least. Anyway, the tact, firmness, and 
talent of Japan are in for a severe test. 

Thus we find Japan policing and protecting 
about twenty million people outside of her own 
fifty million, and, counting all together, she has 
on hei hands the welfare of seventy million — a 
greater population than that of any Western 
nation except Russia and the United States. Of 
these the alien twenty million are in direct agri- 
cultural competition with her own people and 
subject to that of others in the matter of manu- 
factured products. It is true that headway has 
been made in the sale of cotton goods, but here 
the advantage with Japan has been solely in the 
item of labor. Raw material must be imported 
from India or America, and the labor problem 
is already becoming vexatious. 
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China is the competitor toward which Tokyo 
statesmen and financiers turn their anxious eyes. 
China is waking up, not under the lead of Japan, 
but by the stimulus of her example. Already 
Tokyo in unmistakable terms is warning Peking 
not to go too fast. Once China starts no man 
can locate the ending. China is rich in re- 
sources. She has unlimited iron and coal and 
an invincibly industrial people, while her mer- 
chants are the master traders of the East. The 
Japanese are mere amateurs in comparison. 
There exists also a vast hoarded wealth, besides 
the fat trade balance of eighty million taels. It 
is easy to believe that the hoardings of her people, 
once unlocked, would swamp the richest of the 
European nations and make America nervous. 
Three thousand years of phenomenal industry 
have not been without increment, and China is a 
land where no man wastes! 



Women are workers in all Japanese industries. 
The factory figures show that sixty-six per cent. 
of all industrial employees are women, against 
twenty-five per cent, in Great Britain, twenty 
per cent, in Germany, twenty-two per cent, in 
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Italy, and fourteen per cent, in the United States. 
But as less than seven hundred thousand souls 
are employed in factories the figures are more 
or less misleading in comparison with the much 
greater factory employment in the other coun- 
tries named, while the industries are much less 
diversified, being mainly cotton spinning and 
weaving. 

These figures show that but few of Japan's 
fifty million have been caught and caged by 
the manufacturer and set to grinding in the 
treadmill of fixed hours inside of factory doors. 
Those who have been toil long in a double shift 
from nine in the morning until nine at night, and 
from the latter hour until the morning nine 
comes again. So strikes are frequent — not so 
much, it might be surmised, over wages as from 
weariness at the irksomeness of the toil. For in 
all Japan the workman works as he likes m his 
own house, turning exquisite woodwork on his 
foot-driven lathe, carving elegantly, setting his 
marvelous inlays or making silver, bronze, or 
gold obey his will. He labors much or little, as 
he wills. The neighbors drop in to drink tea or 
to admire his skill. He lolls on the soft matting 
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for an afternoon nap, eats when he is hungry 
and drinks when dry. The blacksmith does the 
heaviest tasks, though occasionally his wife 
swings the weightiest hammer. The carpenters 
work methodically and without haste. What is 
time, that it should drive a man when he does not 
wish to hurry ? Thus the rewards are small and 
the economic waste of skill and muscle is great, 
but life is easy and the soul is free. But it does 
not afford any resistless legion of workers drilled 
to effective outputs with which Japan can com- 
pete forcefully with the Western world. She has 
made her military arms concrete and to be well 
measured with those of other lands, but casual 
industry cannot compete with the organized arti- 
cle any more than guerillas can beat battalions. 
Life is so much a mental state that it does not 
follow that the people are not better so, but it is 
not a situation that can create wealth for either 
the many or the few. 

Beyond all this is another factor of wealth- 
making that is destroyed by the government's 
hand in industrial affairs. Capital is scarce in 
Japan, but such as does exist is debarred from 
the safest forms of activity — to wit, the great 
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public franchises of the railway, the telegraph, 
the telephone, and express. Foreign capital in 
America found its initial investment in these 
items. Think of the countless millions em- 
ployed in the railroads, the telegraph, telephone, 
and express companies of the United States. 
Foreign money which Japan would like to see 
busy in Japan will not risk itself in ordinary 
industrials, especially when promoted by new 
and unskilled hands; and local capital, even in 
America, is always timid about doing things at 
home, but will cheerfully take risks and travel 
far. Look at the Boston money in the Western 
roads and mines, for example. 

So, such money as exists in Japan is in little 
demand and interest rates are low. It may be 
said that primarily these public enterprises are 
held by the government in the common welfare, 
and that the people benefit in low rates and the 
mitigation of taxation. But Japan is the high- 
est-taxed country in the world to-day, and 
government ownership, being the closest form of 
monopoly, produces many vexations. For ex- 
ample, the government, needing money to take 
care of its wars past and to come, cannot extend 
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or develop such enterprises, but must hold them 
close and wring every possible penny out of their 
operation. That special public convenience, the 
telephone, in the hands of a private corporation 
would grow with great rapidity in Japan, en- 
riching its promoters and benefiting the com- 
munity, but the government is too poor to extend 
the lines. It is next to impossible to get an 
instrument installed. As to the efficiency of the 
service, the less said about it the better. 

It goes to demonstrate that the social state 
for which so many are clamoring in America 
cannot be lifted into being by its boot-straps. 
All wealth, coming as it does from the soil or the 
sea, must be improved upon and amplified by 
human ingenuity, and this, alas, will not exert 
itself without at least the hope of reward, while 
the co-operative benefits of state control and 
operation in the initial stage, as in Japan, cannot 
breed wealth enough to go around on a universal 
division such as it must necessarily provide. In 
short, it is like Rothschild and the lunatic who 
demanded his share of the great fortune as a 
fellow-citizen of France and was promptly 
handed eighteen francs! So it is in Japan. 
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The individual gets his few sen, but they never 
come together in such concrete form or in such 
able business hands as to make the nation a 
financial or industrial power, and never can 
under existing conditions. 

The government extends its business opera- 
tions considerably beyond the public service 
field. It owns the tobacco monopoly, a source 
of great private wealth in America; the salt 
monopoly, another American wealth-maker; 
has its fingers deep in banking, controls the 
camphor market of the world through its owner- 
ship of the Formosa supply, and essays to oper- 
ate a great steel plant which loses heavily and 
makes it hard for private corporations to com- 
pete. The latter was established as an aid to 
national independence of foreign steel-makers. 
The move may have been necessary, but the 
result is costly to the state and burdensome to 
unassisted individuals. 

The government also maintains a stock-farm. 
It is constantly being appealed to by would-be 
promoters who wish it to extend its activities in 
industrial directions, but the indications now are 
that the administration perceives that the policy, 
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necessary as it may have been to start the people 
in the new course laid down for them, can only 
perpetuate dependence and weaken enterprise. 

Once, in 1340, when all the land had been 
sequestered, the great proprietors of Japan by 
common accord distributed it to the people — 
one acre to each adult male and three-quarters 
of an acre to each woman — and the stagnant 
country throve again. It is inevitable that at 
some near date the government will again have 
to turn its possessions back to the people if they 
are to engage successfully in great wealth mak- 
ing, and secure the effective aid of foreign money. 



One tact impresses itself upon the mind in the 
East, which is that sooner or later the efforts to 
maintain lines against color, except where 
climate and conditions enforce it regardless of 
restrictive measures, will breed a great conflict. 
Australia, for example, has given particular 
offense to the Eastern world. A vast section of 
the continent is tropical or semi-tropical. It is 
pointed out that in the period of thirty years 
tropical Australia grew sixteen hundred in popu- 
lation, while Java, four days distant, grew six- 



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teen million — with the Dutch to help! In all 
Australia four million whites are holding three 
million square miles of land, opposed to seven 
hundred million Asiatics confined to three 
million eight hundred thousand square miles. 
Something must break sometime, and when 
it does, look out! This something will come 
when specific education shall be supplemented 
by general knowledge, and when the theory of 
the rights of man thoroughly penetrates the 
yellow world. And this theory is slowly making 
its way. 

Yet in this movement to break down barriers 
it is not at all likely that Japan will lead the way 
physically. Her example will suffice. She had 
the choice of lying supine, like China and India, 
but chose to arouse and take her place in the 
world. Having taken that place, however, she 
soon finds herself, like the other active, self- 
governing nations, in antagonism with and in 
peril from the inert. China menaces Japan, 
not Japan China. 

The thing the clean, quick, vigorous, and 
intelligent Japanese cannot understand is why 
he should be forbidden lands where shiftless, 
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ignorant, inefficient, and ne'er-do-wells of all the 
Western nations come freely and burden the 
industrious with their poverty, unthrift, and 
stupidity. This touches his pride, and some day 
may light a match or call a bluff. 

So far, therefore, as this single nation is con- 
cerned the danger is not with Japan, but with the 
United States. It may be that in time to come 
we shall see another Venezuelan incident, when 
the Japanese government, weary of devices for 
evading affronts and of endeavoring to preserve 
its attitude of gratitude toward the United 
States, and sore at being barked at, as Mr. Cleve- 
land was, will utter a message in a tone that can- 
not be misunderstood and that will call for an 
answer equally plain. Then will come a test of 
American jingoism versus common sense. Jin- 
goism will probably crawl under the bed, as it did 
in 1895. 

Americashuts the door in the Oriental face and 
then expects the excluded races to come in cheer- 
fully via the keyhole and do business. The Chi- 
nese are shut out by law and the Japanese are 
kept at home by their own government in response 
to pressure from Washington. Both nations are . 
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adept at commercial revenges. The Chinese 
are masters of the art of boycotting, and the 
Japanese are learning to trade. So the latter 
send their own wares in their own ships and 
bring their own purchases in the same way, 
leaving as little benefit to America as they can. 
Tea and raw silk we must have. They are 
learning to make their own cottons and machin- 
ery. So the balance of trade readily becomes 
theirs, which is a considerable offset, perhaps, 
to injured pride. 

"The Japanese, a prudent and valiant nation! 
. . . Their pride and war-like humor being set 
aside, they are as civil, as polite, and curious a 
nation as any in the world, naturally inclined to 
commerce and familiarity with foreigners, and. 
desirous, to excess, to be informed of their 
histories, arts, and sciences. . . . The Chinese 
are peaceable, modest, great lovers of a sedate, 
speculative, and philosophical way of life, but 
withal very much given to fraud and usury. 
The Japanese on the contrary are war-like, in- 
clined to rebellions and a dissolute life, mis- 
trustful, ambitious, and always bent on high 
designs." 

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So wrote Dr. Engebert Kaempfer, who studied 
Japan in 1690-1692, and was the first to give any 
idea of the country, the earlier Jesuit relations 
being confused with piety and their own troubles. 
They have changed little in the more than two 
hundred years that have passed since Kaempfer 
viewed them with his clear, intelligent eyes. 



While the Shogun is but a memory forty-five 
years away, and the heir of the Tokugawa ranks 
merely with the other nobles whom his family so 
long dominated as the real rulers of Japan, the 
idea of a super-ruler does not vanish. The 
elder statesmen, much quoted in the West, are, 
or rather were, real. When Prince Ito lived, he, 
with Prince Yamagata and Count Inouye, 
guided the government. Now the field-mar- 
shal dominates. The government is his. The 
Prime Minister, Prince Katsura, abides by 
his bidding. Despite all the modernity that 
has come in, the Emperor is still to the mass a 
sacred personality, and care is taken to keep him 
so. 

Naturally lese majeste is unknown. The es- 
teem in which the noble and patriotic Emperor 
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is held precludes the thought. But prosecu- 
tions can be had for disrespect of the Royal 
Household, and there are some rules of universal 
conduct to be enforced when the Emperor 
travels abroad. For example, no one is suffered 
to look down upon him from upper stories or 
balconies. They must descend to the street 
level and look up toward him if they are to look 
at all. 

Portraits of the Emperor are on sale in the 
Tokyo shops, but are carefully veiled with tissue, 
lest a chance look of disrespect might fall upon 
them. 

The incredible is always happening. Na- 
poleon said that in fifty years Europe would 
be either Republican or Cossack. It became 
neither. But in less than one hundred years 
after he, the greatest of conquerors, had been 
crushed by Russia, that nation, seemingly re- 
sistless in its might, was pushed back from the 
Pacific, which it had reached with infinite toil, 
crumpled and shorn, by an island race to whom 
Napoleon never gave a thought. Indeed, until 
ten years ago Japan was regarded more as a 
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people doing little things, pretty customs, and 
unique arts, of men who killed themselves 
when affronted or when they had made a mis- 
take, and of women who were Madam Butter- 
flies. 

Japan is so kaleidoscopic that there can be as 
many opinions of the country as there are visi- 
tors. One quick impression is that the Japanese 
are not supermen, as the ingenious and imagina- 
tive war correspondents made them in 1904, but 
a serious people, patriotic, enduring much with a 
vast patience in order to put themselves into the 
right place and dignity in the world's affairs, 
from which for so many centuries they shut 
themselves out. To do this they bow and bend 
with Eastern flexibility, but with no cessation of 
purpose. Without these qualities they would 
be no match for the forceful, impatient West, 
which wants what it wants when it wants it, and 
will not wait or plan. 

The correct view of a great nation, speaking a 
strange tongue and living by rules exactly oppo- 
site our own, is not to be established by glancing 
to the right or the left and then passing on, but 
the true basis for an opinion can readily be de- 
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fined, and this in short is it: Is it a good Japan ? 
Not is it a good France, a good England, or a 
good United States ? It is none of these. But 
judged by all that has been accomplished it is 
a pretty good Japan. 



From Yumoto, where the trolley line from 
Kodzu ends, is a road that leads into the sky. 
It winds and turns for miles amid the crags until 
Miyanoshita is reached, the pearl of pleasure- 
places in Japan. At times the road brims a 
precipice a thousand feet in height, while tor- 
rents roar above and across the way. Deep 
gorges lie below showing the snowy ribbon of a 
foaming stream. Wild hydrangeas fringe the 
overhanging cliffs, and the mountains are 
whitened to their very tops by clusters of the 
fragrant Japanese lily, the largest and most 
beautiful of its kind. In May the cherry-blos- 
soms suggest the road to paradise. The high- 
way is crowded with traffic — carts with a single 
sturdy pony, led with a cord; rattling rickshaws 
and clattering pedestrians, pilgrims from afar, 
make up a strange and never-pausing procession 
winding across the mountains to the valley of 

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Hakone, where Fuji may or may not show itself, 
according to its fickle will ! 

During the Doyo, or dog-days, the jealous 
clouds hug closely and deny the mountain to 
mankind. The traveler may wait for days to 
see the peak mirrored in the lake at Hakone. 
They who come into Yokohama by sea gaze 
eagerly and in vain. To Tokyo the vision comes 
rarely, like the ghost of a giant in the distant sky. 
The hurried traveler often departs without a 
view in the sore comfort that after all it is but one 
mountain! But one mountain, indeed! It is 
the mountain of mountains, the peak of peaks ! 
Chimborazo may be mighty and Everest the 
tallest of earth's giants, but in grace and 
measure none can compare with this glory of 
Japan. 

Fortunate indeed are they to whom Fuji 
deigns to bid farewell. When this journey 
ended the harbor of Yokohama was dull in mist. 
The rain fell spitefully at odd moments. Vi- 
cious little waves slapped the breakwater with 
malice. The sampans scudded about under 
close-drawn sails. As the ship turned heavily 
outward a trail of yellow followed the working 

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screws which disturbed the muddy bay. In a 
short instant the shores grew gray. The beauty 
and magic of it all vanished, and to the eye 
there was no more Japan. Night was near. 
But presently as the vessel crept along the 
shadowy coast two angles of golden light widely 
apart caught the eye, revealing just a suggestion 
of the shapely slopes of Fuji. Then the sun 
burst into full view over the heights of Hakone. 
The golden angles grew large and small, and 
then vanished, but the spreading sunshine took 
the clouds into its embrace, until their magnifi- 
cence glorified the wide heavens. As the vapors 
lowered under the weight of gold the topmost 
peak alone of the peerless mountain rose sharp 
against the sky behind as if wrought in gun- 
metal by some master hand, every outline clear 
and visible. The gilded clouds hid all that lay 
below. The vision held but a moment. A 
silver curtain fell and covered the slender cone. 
The sun dropped behind the mountains, and 
there remained only the blackness of the sea! 
Japan was gone. But Fuji, deft, decorous, and 
Japanese, mindful of the parting guest, had sped 
him in splendor on his way! 
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So end these glimpses of Surface Japan, 
lightly skimmed. Perhaps somewhere below is 
being nurtured, like a queen bee in a hive, an- 
other Ghengis or Tamerlane to break forth in 
season and vex again the war-worn world. I 
saw simply a smiling country, full of amiable, 
orderly people striving to gain not the mastery 
but the esteem of mankind, and wishing only to 
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